“You heard what was said last night?” Sir Denis reminded his companion. “The O’Clory believes that that is already done.”
The faintest of white mists was being burnt away now by the strengthening sun. Long, green waves came rolling in from the Atlantic. Distant rocks gleamed purple in the gathering sunshine. The green of the fields grew deeper, the colouring on the moors warmer. Crawshay lit a cigarette and leaned back against a rock.
“Over in America,” he observed, “I heard all sorts of stories about you. The man Hobson, with whom I was sent to Halifax, and who dragged me off to Chicago, seemed to think that if he could once get his hand on your shoulder there were other charges which you might have to answer. Brightman, that Liverpool man, had the same idea. I am mentioning this for your own sake, Sir Denis.”
The latter shook his head.
“Heaven knows how I’ve kept clear,” he declared, “but there isn’t a thing against me. I sailed close to the wind in Mexico. I’d have fought for them against America if they’d really meant business, but they didn’t. I was too late for the Boer War or I’d have been in that for a certainty. I went through South America, but the little fighting I did there doesn’t amount to anything. After I came back to the States I ran some close shaves, I admit, but I kept clear of the law. Then I got in with some Germans at Washington. They knew who I was, and they knew very well how I felt about England. I did a few things for them — nothing risky. They were keeping me for something big. That came along, as you know. They offered me the job of bringing these things to England, and I took it on.”
“For an amateur,” Crawshay confessed, “you certainly did wonderfully. I am not a professional detective myself, but you fairly beat us on the sea, and you practically beat us on land as well.”
“There’s nothing succeeds like simplicity,” Denis declared. “I gambled upon it that no one would think of searching the curtains of the music hall box in which Gant and I spent apparently a jovial evening. No one did — until it was too late. Then I felt perfectly certain that both you and Brightman would believe I was trying to get hold of Richard Beverley. The poor fellow thought so himself for some time.”
“There is just one question,” Crawshay said, after a moment’s pause, “which I’d like to ask. It’s about Nora Sharey.”
Sir Denis glanced at his companion with a faint smile. He suddenly realised the purport of his lingering.
“Well, what about her?”
“She seems to have followed you very quickly from New York.”
“Must you put it like that? Her father and brother were connected with the German Secret Service in New York, and on the declaration of war they had to hide. She could scarcely stay there alone.”
“She might have gone with her father to Chicago,” Crawshay observed.
“You must remember that she, too, is Irish,” Sir Denis pointed out. “I am not at all sure that she wasn’t a little homesick. By-the-by, are you interested in her?”
“Since you ask me,” Crawshay replied, “I am.”
Sir Denis threw away his cigarette.
“I suppose,” he said quietly, “if I tell you that I am delighted to hear it, for your own sake as well as hers—”
“That’s all I have been hanging about to hear,” Crawshay interrupted, turning towards the castle. “I suppose we shall meet again in London?”
“I think not. They talk about sending me to the Dublin Convention here. Until they want me, I don’t think I shall move.”
Crawshay looked around him. The prospect in its way was beautiful, but save for a few bending figures in the distant fields, there was no sign of any human being.
“You won’t be able to stand this for long,” he remarked. “You’ve lived too turbulent a life to vegetate here.”
Sir Denis laughed softly but with a new ring of real happiness.
“It’s clear that you are not an Irishman!” he declared. “I’ve been away for over ten years. I can just breathe this air, wander about on the beach here, walk on that moorland, watch the sea, poke about amongst my old ruins, send for the priest and talk to him, get my tenants together and hear what they have to say — I can do these things, Crawshay, and breathe the atmosphere of it all down into my lungs and be content. It’s just Ireland — that’s all. — You hurry back to your own bloated, over-rich, smoke-disfigured, town-ruined country, and spend your money on restaurants and theatres if you want to. You’re welcome.”
Sir Denis’ words sounded convincing enough, but his companion only smiled as he brought his car out of a dilapidated coach-house, from amidst the ruins of a score of carriages.
“All the same,” he observed, as he leaned over and shook hands with his host, “I should never be surprised to come across you in that smoke-disfigured den of infamy! Look me up when you come, won’t you?”
“Certainly,” Sir Denis promised. “And — my regards to Nora!”
Richard Beverley, after his first embrace, held his sister’s hands for a moment and looked into her face.
“Why, Katharine,” he exclaimed, “London’s not agreeing with you! You look pale.”
She laughed carelessly.
“It was the heat last month,” she told him. “I shall be all right now. How well you’re looking!”
“I’m fine,” he admitted. “It’s a great life, Katharine. I’m kind of worried about you, though.”
“There is nothing whatever the matter with me,” she assured him, “except that I want some work. In a few days’ time now I shall have it. I have eighty nurses on the way from the hospital, with doctors and dressers and a complete St. Agnes’s outfit. They sailed yesterday, and I shall go across to Havre to meet them.”
“Good for you!” Richard exclaimed. “Say, Katharine, what about lunch?”
“You must be starving,” she declared. “We’ll go down and have it. I feel better already, Dick. I think I must have been lonely.”
They went arm in arm down-stairs and lunched cheerfully. Towards the end of the meal, he asked the question which had been on his lips more than once.
“Heard anything of Jocelyn Thew?”
“Not a word.”
Richard sighed thoughtfully.
“What a waste!” he exclaimed. “A man like that ought to be doing great things. Katharine, you ought to have seen their faces when they searched me and found I was only carrying out a packet of old love letters, and it dawned upon them that he’d got away with the goods! I wonder if they ever caught him.”
“Shouldn’t we have heard of it?” she asked.
“Not necessarily. If he’d been caught under certain circumstances, he might have been shot on sight and we should never have heard a word. Not that that’s likely, of course,” he went on, suddenly realising her pallor. “What a clumsy ass I am, Katharine! We should have heard of it one way or another. — Do you see who’s sitting over there in a corner?”
Katharine looked across the room and shook her head.
“The face of the man in khaki seems familiar,” she admitted.
“That’s Crawshay, the fellow whom Jocelyn Thew fooled. He was married last week to the girl with him. Nora Sharey, her name was. She came from New York.”
“They seem very happy,” Katharine observed, watching them as they left the room.
“Crawshay’s a good fellow enough,” her brother remarked, “and the girl’s all right, although at one time—”