Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 46

end of a very vivid short story. There had been a dispassionateness about Northfleet’s exposition which lent to it a remarkable convincingness; and the occasional lapse from that attitude had made the thing even more real to Colin. But as he trudged up the heathery slope, the standards of everyday feelings came back to him slowly, just as they do to a reader when he lays down the book which has been holding his attention. The impression of a world out of joint began quickly to fade from his mind, among the bell-heather and the rocks of Ruffa, with the little streamlet tinkling into pool after pool as he walked beside it. Natural things appeal to simple minds, and Colin was of the simple cast. Without knowing it, he was being soothed by his surroundings and relieved from his nightmare.

When he reached the watershed, he stopped for a time and scanned the landscape. Down below him, alongside the jetty, lay the white motor-launch, spick and span in the sunshine, with a man in a yachting-cap lounging aboard her. Nearer in, on the path leading across to Heather Lodge, were two laden figures. One of them, from his clothes, evidently belonged to the launch; the other Colin assumed to be Beeston, the assistant, whom he had not seen before. They were carrying up stores from the launch, apparently.

Colin’s eyes passed on to Heather Lodge itself, a stiff-architectured house, built to withstand the winter storms of Ruffa, but unimpressive in the extreme. Was it credible that an ordinary-looking place like that could be the danger-spot of the world’s finance? Nonsense! Colin assured himself. Northfleet had been doing a bit of leg-pulling, seeing how far he could go without raising Colin’s suspicions. There was nothing in all that stuff.

And then, like a cloud on a summer sun, came the recollection of the armed guards. One couldn’t call them ordinary or wave them aside out of the affair. Whether Northfleet had told a straight tale or not, Messrs. Natorp and Zelensky were something that Colin had seen with his own eyes and didn’t need to take on trust. There was something rum about the crew at Heather Lodge. And there was the gold brick also to fit into the scheme. There was no hearsay about it either.

But then, as Colin assured himself, the whole gold-making business might well be—as he phrased it to himself—“All my eye and Betty Martin.” The gold brick and the gold sales had to be explained, certainly. But gold-making! Colin’s robust common sense assured him that people didn’t make gold. Not in quantity at any rate. The gold could be accounted for in far more plausible ways. A Norse pirate’s hoard, for instance, or . . . And as Colin’s eye travelled beyond the bay to the black fangs of the skerry a fresh idea crossed his mind. There was the Armada treasure-ship in the bay. That stuff, too, would be treasure-trove, with all the inducements to secrecy if its store were tapped. One could go on selling gold in quantity for long enough, if one had an Armada galleon to draw from.

His glance passed on to Wester Voe; and the figures of Jean and Hazel on the tennis-court drew his thoughts in another direction. Was it good business to let himself get entangled in Northfleet’s schemes. Colin stood to gain nothing from them, and there was Jean to consider. After all, he knew nothing about Northfleet, except that they had been through University College at the same time. For all one could tell, Northfleet might have turned out a rank wrong ’un since then. Colin would never have heard about that. Perhaps he had been overhasty in parting with that gold brick, he reflected.

But it is difficult to be a pessimist when one stands on a ridge above the sea, with a faint breeze rippling the heather at one’s feet and a summer sun making diamonds on the waves below. Colin reacted to his environment and brushed aside his forebodings. After all, he wasn’t really involved. He could draw out whenever it suited him. And so far, except in the matter of the gold brick, he had done practically nothing in the affair. In short, why worry?

It was a much more cheerful Colin who arrived at Wester Voe and rang the bell for Dinnet.

“Oh, Dinnet, do you remember Mr. Arrow visiting Buff a before this?”

The factotum pondered for a while, then he shook his head.

“No, sir. Before Mr. Arrow took it, Heather Lodge was let to a gentleman retired from the Navy. He took the house year after year, I remember. He was here in 1926, sir, when I first came to Ruffa; and he’d had the house for a year or two before that. He’s dead now, sir. I’ve heard, somewhere, that before him there was a Mr. Leven, who took the house one summer. But that was before my time, sir.’

“Ah! Thanks, Dinnet. That’s all I wanted to know. Idle curiosity, and all that.”

Dinnet retired, evidently surprised at this digging up of ancient history; and Colin was left to-put two and two together and to make what he could from them.

CHAPTER XII

THE MAN FROM THE MAINLAND

“THE ‘fac-to-tum’s’ late to-night, Colin,” Jean complained as they stood outside Wester Voe and gazed in vain towards the little cape round which the motor-boat would appear on its return from the trip to Stornadale with the gardeners.

“Running it a bit fine, certainly,” Colin agreed, glancing at his watch. “Wonder what’s kept him.”

“Isn’t it funny, Colin, how Ruffa changes things?” Jean went on. “At home, with four posts a day, I never bothered about letters. They just came or they didn’t come. But here, when we get them only once a day, I seem to spend my time longing for the post; and when Dinnet brings nothing, it always feels like ages until the next evening. It’s not that I particularly want letters: it’s just