"It's hollow! They're all hollow," the girl exclaimed as they unscrewed the remaining half dozen.
"All the best lighthouses are hollow," Slate said severely. "It makes it so much easier for the crew to reach the lantern gallery... The point is: what's in the hollow? In the case of real lighthouses, four or five storeys of accommodation and stores; in the case of these Porphyry monstrosities... we must see."
But the promising "secret" compartments in the stone light houses were all empty. Or at least they appeared to be at first.
A closer examination, however, revealed that this was not precisely true.
For while six of the recesses were indeed bone dry, clean and empty, the seventh cascaded a small quantity of white, crystalline powder on to Slate's hand when he tapped the side of the shaft with his finger…
CHAPTER NINE: OBSTRUCTIONS AND INTRUSIONS!
THE police constable on duty outside the gates leading to the field in which Bosustow's Circus was wintering prised a handkerchief from the blue serge sleeve of his jacket, extruded it through the slit in his shining cape and blew his nose.
It was almost midnight, it was raining cats and dogs, it was more than six hours before his relief arrived, and he had had a row with his wife and stormed from the house without his dinner. Between eight and ten, he had been drinking at the Crabber — and now he had a raging headache as well as the beginning of a cold. He thought wistfully of the hot Cornish pasties going to waste in Molly's oven, the uncut apple pie, the scalding coffee and the clots of buttery cream spiralling on the dark surface of the liquid. He was very unhappy.
The rain drummed on the dome of his helmet, slid in glittering cascades down the rubber cape, and drenched the lower half of his trouser legs. Angrily, he stamped up and down, trying to pound some warmth into the sodden soles of his socks.
For two pins, he thought, he'd nip on up the road a bit and sit down in the bus shelter at the Falmouth signpost. But you had to be careful. Only last night, Watkins had copped it properly from the Super when some villains had got into the field and started shooting at each other — or so they said: no one seemed to know what had really happened, least of all poor Watkins! He had hoped that, what with those two foreigners finding the body in the harbour, it might all have been forgotten — after all, nothing had been taken, nobody was hurt, and apparently no one at the circus itself was involved. But Sergeant Trelawnay had been really difficult about the thing and had compared Watkins floundering about with his torch to a man lost in a fog made by his own pipe. That, of course, was probably because the Sergeant still had a sore head from his daughter's wedding the day before. They did say he had consumed a prodigious quantity of drink.
Even so, he had still been fairly narked this afternoon when he had detailed the constable for tonight's late trick. "You let anyone through that gate or over that fence tonight, Trewithick," he said, "and I'll have your liver for breakfast!"
It was a sad thing, having men of low sensitivity for superiors, the constable reflected. Still — it wasn't worth the risk. If he did go to the shelter for a sit-down and a smoke, old Curnow just might drive past in one of the Wolseleys; somebody just might get into the field and kick up some kind of a shindig; Trelawnay just might take it into his great head to do the rounds on a bicycle, despite the rain... and if he was found to be away from his post with murders and burglaries all over Porthallow... Constable Trewithick shivered under his cape at the thought of the action which would inevitably follow such a discovery!
He reached the end of his self-imposed beat, from the elm tree below the gate to the shuttered ticket office beyond it, stamped his feet again, swung round, and moved ponderously back towards the tree. If only it had been summer, now, he thought with a disgruntled frown, then there would have been leaves on the tree and he could have simply stood there, sheltering from this dratted rain. As it was, all the bare branches did was to increase the size of the drops which fell on him.
Turning, he trudged back again, idly remarking the reflection in the window of the office of the metal numerals sewn to the collar of his uniform. The seven and the three, dulled by the humidity and beaded with rain, still shone well in the lamplight, he thought, regarding their reversed images with a glow of pride in the handiness of his wife.
Then he remembered — and as his large face creased once more into a scowl, he saw something else reflected in the glass. Somebody was walking up the road towards him.
It was a girl, he saw as he turned to face the newcomer. A pretty girl, too, in her trousers and her boots and her shining black raincoat, with the rain misting her hair and lying in large drops on the soft skin of her face. He gazed approvingly at her as she approached the gates.
"Good evening, Sergeant," she said pleasantly, smiling. "I'm a little late tonight, I'm afraid, but I imagine you'll let me in all right, won't you?" She gave a low musical laugh, completely confident.
And then he remembered her. Of course — it was the new girl! The one who had taken over the sideshow run by the bird who got herself knocked off. Foreigner, she was — a real foreigner, too, he had heard. South African or Australian or American or something like that. Very pretty, though, for all that.
"Evening, Miss," he said. "It's Constable, actually. Constable Trewithick. Of course you can go in... Seeing as you live here, as it were, it'd be a bit of a liberty on my part to try and stop you, wouldn't it?" He chuckled in his turn, moving towards the big gate.
"Oh, well," the girl said. "If all the local police were as charming as you are, I'm sure there'd be nothing but sergeants in the Force!"
"Very kind of you, Miss, I'm sure," the policeman said, swinging the gate wide for her. Was that a blur of movement he had seen by the hedge, a bit farther down the hill there? Or was it simply a drift of rain blowing across the road in the lamplight?... Oh, welclass="underline" he'd look in a minute. The girl was speaking again.
"I really do sympathize — having to stay out on a night like this just so that people like me can sleep safely in our beds," she said. "I'm sure you will be a sergeant very soon. Then you can tell other policemen to do this kind of job, can't you?" She smiled once more.
"Yes, Miss," P.C. Trewithick said. "Thank you kindly."
"Look," the girl said. "Why don't you come in yourself for a moment? Let me make you a hot drink — a cup of coffee or something. You must be perished out here all night. Do."
Trewithick was scandalized. "Oh, no, Miss, thank you," he said. "That would never do. A married man like me alone in a caravan late at night with (you'll excuse me?) a beautiful young lady! Oh, dear me no. Besides — I'm not allowed to leave my post. That's what I'm here for: to see nobody gets in as shouldn't. Thank you kindly just the same, though."
The girl wrinkled her nose. "Who cares what people think!" she said. "But if you're not allowed to, that's a different matter. I'd hate to be accused of contributing to the dereliction of an officer's duty, or whatever it is!... You will give me a call, won't you, nevertheless — if you change your mind about that drink, I mean. I can always bring it out to you, you know."
The policeman smiled. "Very nice of you," he said. "But I think I'd just better stay here, all the same. It's pretty late, after all."
"All right, then. Just as you like. Good night, officer."