“Yell your head off,” he sneered. “No one can hear you. Let’s you and me sit down and have a little chat.”
Cynthia struggled, but he forced her down upon the grass beside him and held her by the waist.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes, you are. What’s your name?” he demanded.
Cynthia tried to drive her clenched right fist into his face, but he caught her wrist.
“I’ll have a kiss for that,” he declared. His vicious mouth approached hers. The girl emitted a piercing shriek and the response was a blow in the face which hurt her but did not prevent her screaming even more loudly. The man shifted his hands to her throat and hesitated, for a male voice was lifted in answer to the scream and somebody could be discerned in the gathering darkness, running up the path.
With an oath, the fellow dropped Cynthia, thrust his hand into his back pocket, pulled out a gun and fired a shot at the approaching figure. It took effect, for the man staggered, stepped off the path and vanished. And at the same instant Cynthia Simpson rolled over and fearlessly precipitated herself over the edge.
There was no pursuit. The assailant peered fearsomely over the cliff into the shadows below, swore forcefully and vanished toward the back road.
Cynthia rolled for a second, righted herself and slid down the steep incline accompanied by a load of sand. This time she did not strike her head on a rock and she arrived at the bottom without the slightest injury. Immediately she rose and started in search of the person who had come to her rescue and who had drawn a bullet.
She was not aware of his proximity until she stumbled over him, pitched headlong and caused him to sit up.
“What the deuce?” said the voice of John Smith.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “It’s you. Are you hurt, Mr. Smith?”
“I don’t quite know,” he answered. “There’s blood on the top of my head where that scoundrel creased me. I guess the fall didn’t hurt me much. Was it you who screamed?”
“Yes,” she said. “Let me see.”
Soft fingers touched the top of his head and she drew in her breath sharply.
“You have been shot!” she exclaimed. “We must get a doctor.”
“Nothing serious. I sort of figured it was you who was in trouble.”
“How did you come to be away out here?” she asked quickly.
He chuckled. “I followed you, Miss Simpson. I’m going to keep following you. What happened up there?”
He could not see Cynthia blush. He was contented to lie flat on the sand and have her kneeling beside him, solicituous for his well-being.
“A perfectly horrible man was lying on the grass of the Folsom place,” she said rapidly. “He grabbed me. He had a revolver. I never dreamed that there could be such terrible people.”
“Some bootlegger taking a few hours off,” replied Smith. “This looks like a peaceful community, Miss Simpson, but there are hard characters abroad after dark.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Cynthia. “This was an Englishman. I think — it sounded like — he had a voice like that Englishman who was with you the night of the murder.”
“Impossible,” replied Smith sharply.
“Then it was the butler. You were with Mr. Smith’s butler that night.”
“Miss Simpson,” he said. “Will you believe me when I assure you that I did not commit the quadruple crime the other night and I don’t know who did? Are you sure this was the voice of the man who was with me that night?”
“Well, I’m not sure, of course. But he was an Englishman.”
“A lot of Cockneys off the rum boats get into the shore gangs,” he said thoughtfully. “May I get up now?”
“Do you think you can?”
He laughed and scrambled to his feet. “I have only a scratch on the top of my head,” he said. “I was so astonished to have a man firing at me that I lost my footing. The situation of the other night seems to be reversed. How did you manage to get away from him?”
She chuckled. “I rolled over the edge. It’s rather fun, though it looks very dangerous. Mr. Smith, I’m rather glad you followed me. I shall never dare walk along the bluff path again.”
“You’d better not without an escort. May I be your escort?”
“Do you want to?” she asked coyly.
“Do I?”
He placed his right hand under her elbow and they trudged along through the sand until they came to one of the occasional staircases. They mounted together and took their time about it.
“You and Mrs. Conlin are very good friends, aren’t you?” she remarked when they reached the top.
“We are not,” he said savagely. Cynthia’s heart leaped.
“But you seemed — that first day—”
“I used to know her,” he said slowly. “I had a crush on her. She married somebody else.”
“Even that doesn’t prevent a man from loving a girl,” she stated.
He growled in his throat. “There were unusually rotten circumstances in this case,” he told her. “I don’t care if I never set eyes on Stella again in this life or the next.”
“She is very beautiful—” Cynthia said wistfully.
“I prefer blondes,” he replied. “Miss Simpson, will you please go down the path? I’ll stand here until you’ve gone quite a distance. I want to catch that Cockney.”
The girl grasped his arm. “No, no,” she cried. “You mustn’t. I’m afraid. I want you to walk back to the hotel with me.”
“Please. The brute laid hands on you. He is a menace—”
“He didn’t hurt me. He has a gun. He’ll kill you. You are wounded, anyway.”
“It’s nothing but a scratch.”
“But you’re unarmed.”
He drew a revolver from his hip pocket. “Not exactly. Please go along.”
“I forbid you.”
He laughed. “Sorry. I’m going after him.”
“Then I’ll go with you.”
“You’re certainly a brave girl. Every second we talk he is getting away further.”
“I hope so. There are police on this island.”
“Yes, but I don’t think much of them. Come on now. Step along.”
“Go,” she said sullenly. “But I stay right here.”
“All right. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He left her and moved cautiously back toward the place where he and Cynthia had gone over the cliff. He didn’t think her assailant could possibly be Haywood. He had more reason than the police to think he knew the identity of the faceless corpse, and if it were Haywood, and somebody else had been slain in the Rapidan-Sears house, he had to run him down and ask him pertinent questions.
He came presently to the place where Cynthia had been struggling with the unknown. He went back and inspected the doors and windows of the empty house at that location and then, fearful of another attack upon the girl, he hastened back.
“Oh, I’m glad to see you!” she exclaimed. “Of course he got away.”
“Vanished like smoke,” he said regretfully.
Jack Billings felt ten years roll off his shoulders as they walked like lovers down the path towards ’Sconset. It was as though the turgid period since leaving college had been wiped out of his existence. He forgot that, even now, he was a lieutenant of a law violator and one to be despised by Cynthia Simpson if she knew all the facts about him.
Realities began to come back to him when the lights of the village came in sight and he fell from his seventh heaven with the sickening speed of Lucifer when he left Cynthia in the hotel lobby and ascended to his room, pushed open the door and found Dan O’Hara sitting by the window contentedly smoking one of Jack’s Corona Coronas.
“You have a hell of a gall,” Billings said indignantly. “What do you want?”