Flint House looked a picture of desolation in the chill grey day, wrapped
in such silence that Charles's cautious knock seemed to reverberate
through the stillness around. But the knocking, repeated more loudly,
aroused no human response. After waiting awhile the young man pulled the
bell. From within the house a cracked and jangling tinkle echoed faintly,
and then quivered into silence. He rang again, but there was no sound of
foot or voice; no noise but the cries of the gulls overhead and the hoarse
beat of the sea at the foot of the cliffs.
A cormorant, sitting on a rock near by, twisted its thin neck to stare
fearlessly at the visitor. But Charles Turold was not thinking of
cormorants. Where was Thalassa? Where was his wife? He believed they were
still in Cornwall, but they might have left the house. He had been in
London a long while. Not so long, though--only twelve days. Twelve days!
Twelve eternities of unendurable hopelessness and loneliness, such as the
damned might know. Was he to fail, now, after finding Sisily? He had a
responsibility, a solemn duty. He had reached Cornwall safely from
London--run the gauntlet of all the watching eyes of the police--and he
would not go back without seeing Thalassa. His mind was thoroughly made
up. He would find him, if he had to walk every inch of Cornwall in search
of him. And when he found him he would wrest the truth out of him--yes, by
God, he would! When he found him, but where was he to be found? The crafty
old scoundrel might be in the house at that moment, lurking there like a
wolf, perhaps grinning down at him from behind some closed window.... A
sudden rage surged over him at that thought, and he fell savagely on the
shut door, beating it with insensate fury with his fists. Damn him, he
would force his way in!
The cormorant ruffled its greenish feathers and watched him curiously. The
faint cries of the gulls overhead seemed borne downward with a note of
mocking derision. Charles Turold stepped back from the door with an uneasy
look at the cormorant, as though fearing to detect in its unreflecting
beadiness of glance some humanly cynical enjoyment at his loss of
self-control. The wave of feeling had spent itself. Not thus was victory
to be won. He paused to consider, then tried the knocker again. The
knocker smote the wood with a hollow sound, like a stroke on the iron door
of a vault, loud enough to rouse the dead. Charles Turold had a
disagreeable impression of Robert Turold starting up in his grave-clothes
at the summons, listening.... But no! The dead man was safe in his grave
by this time. He had forgotten that.
A sudden silence fell on the house: a deep and profound stillness, as
though seas and wind had hushed their wailing speech to listen for the
answer to the knock. The birds, too, were silent. The house remained
immutably quiet. Charles Turold bent down, and peered through the keyhole,
but could see nothing within but darkness. Then, as he looked, a sound
reached his ears, a sound like a thin cackle of laughter from the interior
of the house. In the gathering gloom within he had a momentary impression
of a stealing greyish shape--a shape which vanished from his vision as he
looked.
He rose to his feet, his mind groping blindly for some tangible
explanation of this spectral thing, but finding none. A ghost? He shook
off that feeling roughly. God knows, that house might well be haunted, but
not by a ghost that could laugh, though there was no merriment in that
ghastly cackle. The reality of the thing, whatever it was, could not be
worse than the sound. Had he really seen anything, after all? Was there
some trap about it, some danger to himself? He would have to risk that.
The distant sight of a human figure far away on the wide space of the
moors, clambering over the granite slabs of a stile, turned his thoughts
to a more perceptible danger. If he could see that man more than half a
mile away, his own figure must be apparent over a long distance in that
clear brown expanse. Perhaps at that very moment the policeman from the
churchtown was prowling about the moors in search of him. His actions at
that lonely house were suspicious enough to attract anybody's attention.
That was an act of imprudence which he had no right to commit. He had not
evaded the keen eyes of the London police to be trapped like a rat by a
rural constable. It was too dangerous for him to remain there. He
determined to spend the rest of the day among the cliffs, and return to
Flint House when night fell.
He walked away, briskly at first, but with a more laggard step as he
plunged into the shelter of the great rocks, for he had had nothing to eat
since the night before, and was beginning to be conscious of his weakness.
But he strode on, doggedly enough, for more than an hour, until he found
himself at a part of the coast he had not seen before--a theatre of black
rocks, with dark towering walls, and a hissing sea whitening at the base.
At the foot of these cliffs three jagged conical rocks rose bare and
glistening, the spray from the broken sea dashing far up their sides. As
Charles stood there, looking down, he saw a man appear from the edge of
the furthest one and walk rapidly across the sloping shelf of rock which
spanned the narrow bay near the surface of the sea. His heart leapt within
him as he took in the figure of the man. It was Thalassa.
As Charles climbed down from the higher cliffs to intercept him, there
came to his mind an imperfectly comprehended fragment of conversation
which he had overheard, between waking and dozing, in the train that
morning. The voices drifted to his dulled hearing from the next
compartment, where some men seemed to be discussing somebody of whom they
stood in dread, somebody who was forever striding along the cliffs with
his eyes fixed on some distant horizon, as though seeking some one. The
object of the mysterious being's quest, if it was a quest, nobody who met
him cared to ask. So much he had gathered. He had heard one of the
speakers say: "I've met un, ever so laate, stalkin' aloong like th' devil.
Tes aw token o' a bad conscience. Tes dreadful to think about. I got owt
o' his way.... I'd as soon speak to th' devil. Iss, aw'd." Charles had
thought nothing of this chatter at the time, but he wondered now if they
were talking of Thalassa. Did the local fisherfolk believe that he had
something to do with the murder, and shunned him like Ishmael in
consequence?
He looked like Ishmael at that moment, crossing that wild place, earnestly
scanning every nook of those seamed and riven walls, sometimes glancing
stealthily behind him. His preoccupation in this search--if it was a
search--was so great that he never once glanced ahead, and he did not see
Charles until the young man leaped down the last few paces of his slippery
descent and stood plainly forth before him. Thalassa's brown face did not
move a muscle as he looked at him.
"Thalassa," said Charles sternly, "I have been looking for you."
Thalassa went on, still scanning the secret places of the towering cliffs
as he walked forward with Charles beside him. When the rugged passage was
crossed, and the narrow wild bay left behind, he spoke.
"For what?"
"To have the truth out of you, you infernal scoundrel!" cried the young
man fiercely, his self-control suddenly vanishing at that indifferent
tone. "You know all about the murder of your master; you're going to tell
me, or I'll throw you off these cliffs into the sea."
He gripped the other's arm as he spoke, but Thalassa tore off his fingers,
and leapt backward against a rock, a knife in his hand, snarling like a
wild beast.
"Keep off!" he cried. "Keep off, or by Christ, I'll--" He hooked the air
with his knife.
Charles eyed him across the space, affected almost to nausea by his evil
glance. What a fool he had been to lose his temper! Not in that way was
the truth to be reached. The man before him was not to be terrorized or
intimidated. Sisily's way would have been the best. He wondered whether it
was too late to attempt it.
"I was hasty, Thalassa," he said. "Come, do not let us quarrel after I
have risked everything to get down here to see you. I have a message for
you--from Sisily."
The face of the man crouching by the rock changed instantly. He made a
step forward, as if to speak, then cast a gleaming eye of unbelief at his
companion.
"It's a lie!" he said. "You haven't seen her."
"I'm speaking the truth," Charles earnestly replied. "Do you think I'd
have come back to Cornwall otherwise, knowing the police are searching for
me?"
"Ay, you know that, do you?" muttered the other. "They've been watching
Flint House for you. You were a fool to come back here."
"I'd risk more than that to learn the truth, Thalassa. It's for Sisily's
sake. I've seen her. She's in London, and I've come from her. She gave me
this message to bring to you. She said: 'Tell Thalassa that I ask him to
tell the truth--if he knows it.' The police are looking for her as well as
me."
"I've heered so." With these words, uttered quickly, Thalassa fell into
the silence of a man on his guard and pondering. Charles approached
nearer.
"Thalassa," he pleaded, "if you are keeping anything back you must tell me
for Sisily's sake."
"How do I know you've seen her?" retorted Thalassa, darting a dark crafty
look at him.
Charles was overwhelmed by a sense of catastrophe. Here was a possibility
which had been overlooked. How was he to instil belief that he spoke the
truth? A moment passed. Thalassa cast another black look at him, and
turned as if to walk away. "I'll keep my word," he muttered to himself.
The young man's quick ear caught the whispered sentence, and saw the way.
"I'll prove it to you," he said. "You promised Sisily that you'd tell
nobody she was at Flint House to see her father on the night he was
killed. How could I know that unless I'd seen her?"
"What else?" said Thalassa, facing him with a strange and doubtful glance.
"You let her in," Charles rapidly continued, "and you waited downstairs
for her. Afterwards you took her back across the moors to catch the
wagonette. It was on the way, near the cross-roads, that Sisily made you
promise not to tell anybody that she'd been there that night."
"Suppose it's true--what then?" Thalassa's voice was edged with the
craftiest caution. "She's sent you to me to ask for the truth, say you.
'Twould have been safer not. What else is there to say, when she's told
you everything?" He cast a look of savage jealousy at the young man.
"Much." Charles spoke rapidly, but his glance was despairing. "What
happened while you were away from the house? What sent your wife mad? What
did you find when you returned? You know these things, Thalassa."
"Happen I did, what good'd come of telling them?"
"To save Sisily."
"They'd not help to save her."
"Do you think she shot her father?"
Thalassa gave him another dark look, but remained silent.
"You know she didn't, you hound!" cried Charles, anger flaring up in him
again. "It was you--it must have been you. Listen to me! I know almost
enough to hang you. I was in the house while you were away, and found your
master lying dead in his study, and the key of the door in the passage
outside. Who could have dropped it there except you?"
"'Tweren't me. 'Twas done afore I got back to the house," answered
Thalassa.
"What time was it when you left the house with Sisily?"
"Agone half-past eight: perhaps ten minutes after. She came running
downstairs, her eyes staring and blazing. 'Thalassa, dear Thalassa, for
pity's sake let me out,' she said half-sobbing. 'Oh, what did I come for?
He's wicked--wicked.' Twasn't for me to say anything between father and
daughter, so I just opened the door without a word, and went out with
her."
"What time did Sisily catch the wagonette?"
"That's what I don't know. She made me go back when we got to the
cross-roads. She knew as well as I did that the old fool who drives it
wasn't particular as to time, and she worried about my old woman getting
scairt if she found herself alone, and me out. 'Go back to her, Thalassa,'
she said, 'I shall be all right now.' That was just after she'd made me
promise to tell nobody that she'd been to see her father that night. And,
by God, I kept my word. Nobody got anything out of me, though they tried
hard enough. Well, when she sent me back I went, leaving her standing, for
I had my own reason for going. When I looked back after a bit I saw her
standing there by the light of the dirty little lamp above the
cross-roads."
"Did you see the wagonette on the road?"
"Not a sign of it. Just her--alone."
A faint hope died in Charles's breast. Even the drunken irregularity of a
Cornish cabman told against Sisily. But that point was not so immediately
important as Thalassa's story that the murder had been committed during
his absence from Flint House. Although his own experience supported that
supposition, Charles was reluctant to accept a theory which plunged the
events of that night into deeper mystery than ever.
"Well, go on," he said. "What did you find when you got back?"
"The house was dark and the door open. The wind was coming in from the sea
sharp enough to take your head off your shoulders, and I thought perhaps
I'd jammed the door without closing it, and it had blowed open with the
wind. But when I got inside I heered something like moaning. I thought
that might be the wind too, for it's for ever screeching up and down the
passages like a devil, specially o' nights. I--" He stopped suddenly,
with a cautious sidelong look at his listener.
"Yes, yes!" cried Charles. "And what then?"
Thalassa went on, but a little moodily.
"I went along to the kitchen and found the old woman lying on the floor,
in a kind of fit or faint, making the queer noise I'd just heered. When I
picked her up she opened her eyes, laughing and crying and making mouths
as she pointed to the ceiling. I could get nothing out of her for a while.
Then she mutters something about a crash upstairs, and goes off into
another fit. I carried her into her bedroom and went upstairs as fast as
my legs would take me. There was a light under his door, but he didn't
answer when I knocked. I tried to open it, but it was locked inside. In a
bit there was a knock downstairs. You know what happened after that." He
lapsed into silence again, with another look at the young man.
"That was when my aunt and her husband and Dr. Ravenshaw came to the
door?" said Charles, filling in the pause. "But how was it that you told
them that you feared something had happened to your master? Was that pure
guesswork on your part? You hadn't been in the room, you say."
"I had to tell them something, hadn't I?" retorted the other sullenly. "If
I hadn't told them that, it would a' all come out about me going out with
Miss Sisily, and not into the coal cellar, as I said."
"It is astonishing that your story should have been so near the truth when
you knew nothing of what had taken place."
"I did know something. The door was open, the house dark, and she in a fit
on the floor, saying there'd been a crash upstairs. Then his door was
locked, and I couldn't get an answer. Wasn't that enough?"
"Hardly enough to warrant your saying that you feared your master had been
murdered--unless you expected him to be murdered."
"I didn't say that," replied Thalassa with unusual quickness. "All I said
was that I was afeered something had happened to him. There was reason for
thinking that. I had to make up my story quick--that part about just going
for Dr. Ravenshaw. That was because I'd still got my hat and topcoat on,
just as I'd come in from the moors, and I wasn't going to break my promise
to Miss Sisily."
"Did you see the blood under the door when you went up and tried to get
in?"
"I've told you all there is to tell," was the dogged response.
"What frightened your wife so much? Do you think she saw the murderer?"
"That's what I would like to know," responded Thalassa, with a swift
cunning glance.
He turned his face away and looked across the sea, the brown outline of
his hooked profile more than ever like an effigy carved by savage hands.
Charles scanned him despairingly. The feeling was strong within him that
he was still keeping something back.
"Thalassa," he said, "you should have told this story before. You have
done wrong in keeping it back."
"'Twould a' been breaking of my word to Miss Sisily."
"It was of more importance to clear her. You could have done that if you
had come forward and told the police, as you've just told me, that she
left the house with you before nine o'clock on that night."
"'Twouldn't a' helped if I had. I found out next day that the wagonette
didn't get to the cross-roads that night till nearly ten o'clock. 'Twas
after half-past nine when it left the inn."
"What made you find out that?"
"Do you think I didn't put my wits to work when the damned detective was
trying to put me into it as well as her? I thought it all out then--about
telling the truth. But I saw 'twould a' been no good for her, but only
made matters worse. Who'd a' believed me? There be times when a man can
say too much, so I kept my mouth shut."
There was so much sense in this that Charles had nothing to say in reply.
In silence they tramped along till they reached the dip of the sea in
which the Moon Rock lay. Here they paused, as if with the mutual feeling
that the time had come for the interview to end. Behind them towered the
cliffs, with Flint House hanging crazily on the summit far above where
they stood. The eye of Charles ranged along the shore to the spot where he
had said good-bye to Sisily not so very long ago, then returned to rest
doubtingly on Thalassa. The old man stood with his hand resting on a giant
rock, his dark eyes fixed on the rim of the waste of grey water where a
weak declining sun hung irresolutely, as though fearing the inevitable
plunge.
"I'd a' given my right arm to have saved her from this," Charles heard him
mutter.
Charles found himself looking down at Thalassa's brown muscular arm,
corded with veins, stretched out on the rock by which he stood. It was as
though it had been bared for his inspection, which was not, indeed, the
case. If that arm could save Sisily, it was at her service. But what was
the good of that? What was the good of his own efforts to help her?
Charles had a suffocating feeling of the futility of human effort when
opposed by the malignity of Fate. He asked himself with aching heart what
was to be the outcome of it all? He had failed. What then? It was not
until that moment that he realized how strongly he had been buoyed up by
the false optimism of hope. His consciousness, as though directed by the
power of a devil, was forced to look for the first time upon the hideous
inevitability of the appointed end.
"No, no! Not that--not that," he shudderingly whispered to himself.
Neither moved. The minutes passed leaden-footed. It was silent and still
in that wild spot, as if theirs were the only two human hearts beating in
a dead world. It seemed as though neither could bring it upon himself to
terminate the interview. Charles was the first to break the silence. He
spoke like a man coming out of a dream.
"Did that clock upstairs keep good time?" he asked in a low voice.
Thalassa turned on him as if not understanding the purport of the
question.
"It was going shipshape and Bristol fashion in the afternoon. What's that
got to do with it? What does it signify if it was five minutes fast or
slow?"
The logic of the answer was apparent to Charles, who knew he was only
attempting to pluck something by chance out of the dark maze. But another
and shrewder idea started up in his mind.
"What was your reason for hurrying back across the moors that night?"
"Miss Sisily told me to go."
"But you had another reason--a reason of your own," said Charles, turning
quickly to regard him. "You said so yourself."
"If I had I've forgotten what it was," said Thalassa with a black look.
"You cannot have forgotten!" cried Charles. "What was it?" Hope sprang up
in his heart again like a warm flame as he detected something confused and
irresolute in the other's attitude. "Thalassa, you are keeping something
back. You know, or you guess, who the murderer is!"
"I'm keeping nothing back."
"You are. I can see it in your face. What is it that you will not tell?
What do you fear?"
"The gallows--for one thing."
"You'd sooner see Sisily lose her life on them?"
This bitter taunt, wrung from the depth of the young man's anguished
heart, had an instantaneous and unexpected effect on his companion.
"No, no!" he hoarsely cried, "I couldn't a' bear that. But it's nothing to
tell, nothing to help. It was earlier that night, before she came. I was
looking out of the kitchen window, when I thought I saw a rock move. Then
I looked again, and it seemed like a man--though I couldn't see his face."
"Is that all?" Bitter disappointment rang in Charles's voice. "That might
have been me. I was out on the rocks that night, close to Flint House."
"'Tweren't you." Thalassa's reply was so low as to be almost inaudible. "I
don't know who it was, but I'll take my Bible oath it weren't you."
"Who was it then?" Charles asked breathlessly.
"A dead man, or his spirit. I know that now, though I laughed when
_he_ said it. I know better now."
He stopped suddenly, like one who has said too much, and looked moodily
out to sea.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Never mind what I mean. It's nothing to do with you. A man's a fool when
he gets talking. The tongue trips you up."
"Thalassa," said Charles solemnly, "if you know anything which might throw
the remotest light on this mystery it is your duty to reveal it."
"It's easy to talk. But I swore--I swore I would never tell."
"This is the moment to forget your oath."
"It's fine to talk--for you. But he'd come back to haunt me, if he knew."
He jerked his thumb in the direction of the distant churchyard where
Robert Turold lay.
Charles looked at his grim and secret face in despair. "I hope you realize
what you are doing by keeping silence," he said.
"I'm keeping a still tongue in my head, for one thing."
"For one thing--yes. For another, you're injuring Sisily--you're doing
more than injure her. You're letting her remain under suspicion of her
father's death, in hiding in London, hunted by the police. Yet she
believed in you. It was she who sent me to you, it was she who said: 'Tell
Thalassa from me to tell the truth, if he knows it.' Is she mistaken in
you, Thalassa? Do you think more of your own skin than her safety?"