Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 29
“You’ve got a geometrical brain, or something,” Colin suggested. “Don’t mind admitting I got completely tangled up before we’d gone a couple of hundred yards, as we came in. I used to think cave-hunting must be great sport, from what I’ve read about it; but I guess I haven’t got the temperament for it in practice, if this experience is a sample. Too stuffy, for one thing.”
They left the thread clue behind them instead of reeling it up as they retired. Northfleet thought it might be useful to him in checking his map during future exploration, since he was bound to come across it in his examination of “the other half” of the maze when he passed along the other wall of the corridors. They contented themselves with letting it slip through their fingers as they went along.
Colin heaved a sigh of relief when once more they found themselves at the foot of the stairway leading up to the house.
CHAPTER VIII
THE YACHT
COLIN rebaited the two hooks on Jean’s line and dropped the sprowl over the side of the motor-boat.
“Another mackerel,” he remarked disparagingly, with reference to her latest catch. “Must be a shoal of them about. Better chuck it now, dear. I’m not going to insult my palate by offering it mackerel—too coarse for Colin—and you can’t possibly eat all this lot yourself.”
It was Jean’s first experience of hand-line fishing and she was loath to stop.
“The Dinnets can have them,” she suggested. “And if they don’t want them, they can give them to the gardeners.”
“Something in that, maybe,” Colin acquiesced. “Bit hard on the gardeners, perhaps, from my point of view. But they can always drop ’em overboard on the way home, if they don’t like ’em. There’s aye a way, as they say.”
“Just one more,” Jean pleaded.
“All right. One more,” Colin agreed. “And then we’ll have to push for the shore. It’s getting dark. Don’t much care about sitting here with the engine off when all these rocks are about.” Jean glanced up at the cloudy horizon and found to her surprise that the dusk had deepened almost into night as she fished. The (ratline of Ruffa hung above her, sharp against the dull sky; but it was only a silhouette on the surface of which shone the lights from the windows of Wester Voe and Heather Lodge. Suddenly fresh beacons appeared on the headland across the bay from Wester Voe.
“Look, Colin! What’s that over there?” Jean exclaimed, pointing to them. “See the two lights, like electric torches, over yonder? What can they be?”
Colin turned round and examined them.
“Electric torches, right enough, by the look of them. Not moving about, though. Seem as if they were fixed to point somewhere in this direction. It’s all heather up there. Rum, that. Must be some of the Heather Lodge people playing about, unless it’s Northfleet amusing himself by waking up his bird friends.”
He stared at the lights, trying to distinguish something in the surrounding darkness; but there was nothing detectable. Jean soon lost interest in the phenomenon.
“Colin, do you think it’s quite safe for Mr. Northfleet to go down alone into these passages under Wester Voe? From what you said about them, it seems a bit risky for him, doesn’t it? Suppose he had an accident, or lost his way?”
“He’s finished down there,” Colin explained, reassuringly. “He told me this afternoon that he’s got the whole affair mapped now, so he won’t be going down again. By the way, he’s worked out the run of the passage, and it seems it goes up to Heather Lodge. The bricked-up bit must be somewhere under the Heather Lodge cellars, if they have any. He took the corresponding bearings aboveground, and that’s where they led him, apparently.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s bricked up, then. You know, Colin, I don’t like these people at Heather Lodge—except Hazel, of course.”
“They don’t bother us, anyhow,” Colin pointed out.
“That’s true,” Jean admitted. “Still . . . I rather wish they weren’t there, Colin. There’s something funny about Heather Lodge. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve got a sort of feeling that there’s something queer.”
Colin was not a little vexed to find that all his precautions for Jean’s peace of mind seemed to have come to nothing.
“Hazel been saying anything to make you feel like that?” he demanded suspiciously.
“Oh, no,” Jean declared emphatically. “It’s just that I’m a nervous little beast, Colin; and I don’t quite like the notion of armed men, and big dogs, and so on, over there at Heather Lodge. Hazel’s explanation sounds a bit thin, when I think over it. She believes it herself. She’s got a sort of contempt for that uncle of hers. But—well, somehow, it doesn’t sound good enough, does it, Colin?”
“She knows old Arrow, and you don’t,” Colin pointed out. “If it satisfies her, it ought to be good enough for you, shouldn’t it?”
Much to his relief, Jean’s attention was diverted before she could press the matter further.
“What’s that, Colin?” she exclaimed. “H’sh! Listen!”
Out of the depths of the dusk came a slow throbbing; then a dim grey shape loomed up and drew nearer over the smooth waters. Soon it passed them at a distance: a small yacht under bare poles, feeling its way cautiously down the channel into the bay. Dimly they could see the man at the wheel, and a second figure which seemed to be kneeling on the deck, busy with some task or other.
“Visitors?” said Colin, in some surprise. “Looks about a fifteen tonner. Auxiliary motor, evidently. And they mean to stay the night, it seems,” he added, as the splash of the anchor and the rattle of the chain came to them across the water.
Struck by an idea, he glanced up at the two lights on the headland. Almost at the roar of the anchor-chain they were extinguished, having evidently served their purpose. Whoever the strangers