DEATH IN THE CAVE
Alone, Brendon regarded the future with some melancholy, for he believed that only Chance had robbed him of his great hope. Chance, so often a valued servant, now, in the mightiest matter of his life, turned against him. Not for a moment could he or would he compare himself with the man he now regarded as a successful rival; but accident had given Doria superb opportunities while denying to Brendon any opportunity whatever. He told himself, however, that a cleverer man than he would have made opportunities. What was his love worth if it could not triumph over the handicaps of Chance?
He felt ruled out, and he had not even the excuse to impose himself upon Jenny and still seek to win her by pretending that he was better fitted to make her permanently happy than his rival. Indeed he knew that in the long run such a cheerful and versatile soul as Giuseppe was more likely to satisfy Jenny than he, for Doria would have all his time to devote to her, while marriage and a home must be only a part of Brendon's future existence. There remained his work, and he well knew that, whatever Jenny's position and independence, he would not leave the business that had brought him renown. Only on one ground he doubted for her, and again and again feared that such an attractive being as Doria might follow the tradition of his race and presently weary of one woman.
Next he considered another aspect of the situation and thought of every word that Jenny had recently spoken. They pointed to one conclusion in his judgment and he believed that when a seemly period had elapsed she would allow herself to love Doria. That was as much as to say she had already begun to do so, if unconsciously. This surprised him, for even granting the obvious fascination of the man, he could hardly believe that the image of her first husband had already begun to grow faint in Jenny's memory. He remembered her grief and protestations at Princetown; he perceived the deep mourning which she wore. She was indeed young, but her character had never appeared to him youthful or light-hearted. Against that fact, however, he had certainly only known her after her sorrow and loss, and he remembered how she had sung on the moor upon the evening she passed him in the sunset light. She had probably been cheerful and joyous before her husband's death. But she surely never possessed a frivolous nature. His knowledge of character told him that. And there was strength as well as sweetness in her face. Serious subjects had interested her in his small experience of her company; but that might be because she responded, as a delicate instrument, to her environment; and he himself had never been anything but serious beside her. With the Italian, no doubt, there had happened moments when she could sometimes smile and forget. Doria's own affairs, of which he loved to chatter, had doubtless often distracted Mrs. Pendean from her own melancholy reflection, and in any case she could not sigh forever at her age.
The return of the motor boat arrested his reflections. She had been gone about an hour when Mark perceived her running very swiftly homeward. Guessing that Bendigo Redmayne and his brother were now aboard, he prepared to retire until the following day to the room he occupied. He had arranged to be invisible unless Robert Redmayne were willing to see him and discuss the future.
But Doria once more came back to "Crow's Nest" alone, and what he had to tell soon altered the detective's plans. For Giuseppe was much concerned and feared that evil had overtaken his master.
"After the time was up, I ran in," he said, "and the rising tide brought me within a few yards of the mouth of the cave. The light was burning but I could see neither of them. I hailed twice and got no answer. All was still as the grave and I went near enough to the shore to satisfy myself that there was nobody there. The cave was empty. Now I am a good deal alarmed and I come back to you."
"You didn't land?"
"I didn't touch shore, but I was within five yards of the cave, none the less, for the tide is now risen. The light shone upon emptiness. I beg you will return with me, for I feel that some evil thing may have happened."
Much puzzled, Brendon delayed only to get his revolver and an electric torch. He then descended with Doria to the water and they were soon afloat again. The boat ran at full speed for a few minutes; then her course was changed and she turned in under the cliffs. Mark soon saw a solitary gleam of light, like a glowworm, at sea level in the solid darkness of the precipices, and Doria, slowing down, crept in toward it. Presently he shut off his engine and the launch grounded her prow on a little beach before the entrance of Robert Redmayne's hiding-place. The lamp shone brightly, but its illumination, though serving to show the cavern empty, was not sufficient to light its lofty roof, or reveal a second exit, where a tunnel ran up at the rear and could be climbed by steps roughly hewn in the stone.
"It is a place my master showed me long ago," explained Doria. "It was used by smugglers in the old days and they have cut steps that still exist."
Both men landed and Giuseppe made fast the launch. Then immediate evidence of tragedy confronted them. The floor of the cave was of very fine shingle intermixed with sand. The sides were much broken and the strata of the rock had wrinkled and bent in upon itself. The lamp stood on a ledge and flung a radius of light over the floor beneath. Here had been collected the food and drink supplied to Redmayne on the previous day, and it was clear that he had eaten and drunk heartily. But the arresting fact appeared on the beaten and broken surface of the ground. Heavy boots had torn this up and plowed furrows in it. At one spot lay an impression, as though some large object had fallen, and here Brendon saw blood—a dark patch already drying, for the substance of it was soaked away in the sandy shingle on which it had dropped.
It was a blot rather than a pool and under his electric lamp Mark perceived a trail of other drops extending irregularly toward the back of the cavern. From the mark of the fallen body a ridge ploughed through the shingle extending rearward, and he judged that one of the two men had certainly felled the other and then drawn him toward the chimney, or tunnel that opened at the back of the cave. Spots of blood and the dragged impression of some heavy body stretched along the ground to the stone steps and there disappeared.
The detective stopped here and inquired the length of the staircase and whither it led; but for a time his companion appeared too dazed to answer him. Giuseppe showed a good deal of the white feather, combined with sincere emotion at the implicit tragedy.
"This is death—death!" he kept repeating, and between his words his mouth hung open and his eyes rolled fearfully over the shadowy places round about him.
"Pull yourself together and help me if you can," said. Brendon. "Every moment may make all the difference. It looks to me as though somebody had been dragged up here. Is that possible?"
"To a very powerful man it might be. But he was weak—no good."
"Where does this place lead?"
"There are many shallow steps, then a long slope and, after that, you have to bend your head and scramble out through a hole. You are then on a plateau halfway up the cliff. It is a broad ledge and from it one only track, rough and steep, rises up zigzag, like our hairpin roads in Italy, till you reach the summit of the cliff. But it is rough and broken—impossible by night."
"We must go that way all the same and make it possible. Is the boat fast?"
"If you will help me, we will pull her up into the cave. Then we can hunt and she will not take harm."
Lamenting the loss of time, Mark lent a hand and the launch was soon above high-water mark. Then, with Brendon in front and the light from his torch upon the steps, they began their ascent. Save for a drop of blood here and there, the stone stairway gave no clue; but when they had reached its summit and the subterranean path turned to the left, still in a tunnel of the solid rock, they marked on the ascending slope, slippery with percolations from the roof, a straight smear dragged over the muddy surface. Pursued for fifty yards the tunnel began to narrow and the roof descend, but still the smooth track of a heavy object being dragged upward was evident. Save for an occasional word the men proceeded in silence, but Brendon sometimes heard the Italian speaking to himself. "Padron mio, padron mio—death!" he repeated.
For the last ten yards of the tunnel Mark had to go on his knees and crawl. Then he emerged and found himself in the open air on a shelf hung high between the earth and the sea. All was dark and very silent. He held up his hand to Doria and the two listened intently for some minutes, but only the subdued murmur of the water far beneath reached their ears. No sound broke the stillness round about. Under their feet stretched a ledge of fine turf, browned by winter and covered with the evidence of sea birds. Giuseppe picked up a few grey feathers as the electric torch swept the surface of the plateau.
"For the master's pipe," he explained. "He uses feathers to cleanse it."
Overhead the cliff line stretched black as ink against the sky, making the midnight clouds above it light by contrast. Here Brendon saw evidences that the dead weight dragged from beneath had remained still a while, and he observed an impress near it on the herbage, where doubtless a living man had rested after his exertions. There were clots of blood on the grass near this spot, but no other sign visible in the present condition of darkness. Remembering the death of Michael Pendean, Brendon was already reconstructing, in theory, the events immediately under his notice. That Bendigo Redmayne's brother had slain the elder now appeared too probable; and he had apparently proceeded as before and removed his victim—in a sack—for the line on the cave floor below and along the path which Mark had just traversed indicated some heavy, rounded object that did not change its shape as it was dragged along.
For two minutes he stood, then spoke.
"Where is the path from here?" he asked, and Doria, proceeding cautiously to the east of the plateau, presently indicated a rocky footpath that ascended from it. The track was rough and evidently seldom used, for brambles and dead vegetation lay across it. They proceeded by this way and Brendon directed the other to disturb nothing, so that careful examination might, if necessary, be made when daylight returned. The path elbowed to right and left sharply, ever ascending, and it was not too steep to prevent steady progress. It ended at last on the summit of the cliffs, where, after a barren space of fifty yards, a low wall ran separating ploughed lands from the precipices. But no sight of any human being awaited them and, on the close sward of the summit, footsteps would have left no record.
"What d'you make of it?" asked Doria. "Your mind is swift and skilled in these deviltries. Is it true that my master and my friend is a dead man—the old sea wolf dead?"
"Yes," said Brendon drearily. "In my mind there is no doubt of it. It is also true that a thing has happened which I should have prevented and a life been lost which might have been saved. From the first I have taken too much on trust in this matter and believed all that I was told too readily."
"That is no blame to you," answered the other. "Why should you have doubted what you heard?"
"Because it was my business to credit nothing and trust nobody. I am not blaming anybody, or suggesting any attempts to deceive me; but I have accepted what sounded obvious and rational, as we all did, instead of examining things for myself. You may not understand this, Doria; but other people will be only too quick to do so."
"You did the best you could; so did everybody. Who was to know that he came here to kill his brother?"
"A madman may do anything. My fault has been to assume his return to sanity."
"What more natural? How could you assume otherwise? Only an insane man would have killed Madonna's husband, and only a very sane one would have escaped the sleuths afterward. So you argued that he was mad and then sane again; yet now he has gone mad once more."
Brendon desired to be at Dartmouth as swiftly as possible, so that a search might be instituted at dawn. Doria considered whether he might make best speed by road or water, and decided that he could bring Mark more quickly to the seaport in the launch than along the highway.
"We must, however, return by the tunnel," he said, "for there is no other route by which we can get back to the boat."
Brendon agreed and they descended the zigzag path and then, from the plateau, reëntered the tunnel and presently reached the steps again and the cavern beneath. Extinguishing the lamp, which still burned steadily, they were soon afloat, and under a tremor of dawn the little vessel cut her way at her best speed, flinging a sheaf of foam from her bows and leaving a white wake on the still and leaden-coloured sea.
They saw a figure beneath the flagstaff at "Crow's Nest" and both recognized Jenny Pendean. She made no signal, but the sight of her evidently disturbed Giuseppe's mind. He stopped the boat and appealed to Brendon.
"My heart is in my mouth," he said. "A sudden fear has overtaken me. This madman—it may be that he has turned against his own and those who are his best friends. There is a thing lunatics will do. It follows—while we are away—do you not see? There are only two women at 'Crow's Nest' now, and he might come and make a clean sweep—is it not so?"
"You think that?"
"With God and the devil all things are possible," answered the other, his eyes lifted to the house on the cliffs.
"You're right. Run in. There may be a danger for her."
Doria was triumphant.
"Even you do not think of everything," he cried; but the other did not answer. On him lay a load of responsibility and a heavy sense of failure.
He directed Doria how to act, however.
"Tell Mrs. Pendean and the servant to lock up the house and then join us," he said. "They had better come to Dartmouth, and they can return presently with you, after you have landed me. Beg that they do not delay a moment."
Doria obeyed and in ten minutes returned with Jenny, dazed and pale, and the frightened domestic still fumbling at her bodice buttons. They were both in great fear and full of words; but Brendon begged them to be quiet. He warned Jenny that the worst was to be dreaded for her uncle, and their awful news reduced her to silence quickly enough. Thus they sped on their way, leaped between the harbour heads before sunrise, and soon came ashore at the landing stage.
Doria's work was now done and, having directed him to take the women back, Mark bade them all keep the house until more news should reach them.
"Telephone to the police station if you have anything to report," he directed, "but should the man appear and attempt to enter, prevent him from doing so."
He gave them further directions and then they parted.
In half an hour the news had spread, search parties set out by land, and Brendon himself, with Inspector Damarell and two constables, put to sea in the harbour-master's swift steam launch. Some food had been brought aboard and Mark made a meal as he described the incidents of the night. It was eight o'clock before they reached the cavern and began a methodical search over the ground and upward. Mark had arranged with Doria that a signal should fly from "Crow's Nest" for him if there were any news; but nothing had happened, for the flagpole was bare.
Then began a laborious hunt in the cave and the tunnel by which it was approached from above. Morning light filled the hollow place and the officers working methodically left no cranny unexplored; but their combined efforts by daylight revealed little more than Brendon had already found for himself in the darkness. There was nothing but the trampled sand, the partially eaten store of food, the lamp on its stone bracket, the black blot of blood, and the shallow trench left by some rounded object that had been dragged to the steps. The tide was down but the little beach only displayed the usual debris at high-water mark. Inspector Damarell returned to the steam launch and bade the skipper go back to Dartmouth.
"We'll ride home by motor from above," he said. "Tell them to bring my runabout car to the top of Hawk Beak Hill; and let 'em fetch along some sandwiches and half a dozen bottles of Bass; I'm thinking we shall want 'em by noon."
The launch was off and once more the chimney with the steps, the inclined plane beyond, and the plateau halfway up the cliff were all examined with patient scrutiny. The police went at a foot's pace, yet nothing appeared save an occasional drop of blood upon a stone and the trail of the object dragged upward on the previous night.
"He must be a Samson," said Mark. "Consider if you or I had to pull a solid, eleven-stone man in a sack up here."
"I could not," admitted the inspector. "But it was done. We're going to have a repetition of that job at Berry Head in the summer. We shall hunt the cliffs, like a pack of hounds, and presently find some place hanging over deep water. Then we shall hit on a sack in a rabbit hole or badger's earth—and that will be all there is to it."
On the plateau they rested, while Brendon found some clear marks of feet—a heavy, iron-shod boot, which he recognized. They occurred in a soft place just outside the mouth of the tunnel and he recollected the toe plates and the triangle-headed nails that held them.
He called Inspector Damarell.
"When this is compared with the plaster casts taken at Foggintor, you'll find it's the same boot," he said. "That's no surprise, of course, but it proves probably that we are dealing with the same man."
"And he'll use the same means to vanish into thin air that he did six months ago," prophesied the other. "You mark me, Brendon, this is not one man's work. There's a lot hid under this job that hasn't seen light—just as there was under the last. It's very easy to say, because we can't find a motive, the man's mad. That's the line of least resistance; but it don't follow by a long sight that it's the right line. Here's a chap has lured his brother to death, and very cunning he's been about it. He's pitched a yarn and then, after a promise to turn up, he changes his mind and makes a new plan altogether by which old Ben Redmayne is put entirely in his power. Then—"
"But who was to know he meant mischief? We had facts to deal with. Mrs. Pendean herself had seen and spoken to him; so had Doria. In the case of the lady, at any rate, all she said was above suspicion. She hid nothing; she behaved like a Christian woman, wept at the spectacle of his awful misery, and brought his message to his brother. Then sudden, panic fear overtook the man at the last moment—natural enough—and he begged Bendigo Redmayne to see him in his hiding-place alone. It rang true as a bell. For myself I had not a shadow of suspicion."
"That's all right," admitted Damarell, "and I'm not one who pretends to be wise after the event. But, as I told you before, I thought it a mistake to suspend our search and take the matter out of professional hands just when we were safe to nab him. You were in command and we obeyed, but whatever the murderer had to say would as well have been said to us as to his brother—and better; because in any case he might have tempted a brother to break the law for him. Now there's more innocent blood been shed and a damned, dangerous criminal—mad or sane—is still at large. Most likely more than one. However, it is not much use jawing, I grant you. What we've got to do is to catch them—if we can."
Brendon made no reply to this speech. He was vexed, yet knew that he had heard little more than the truth.
He examined the plateau and showed again where some round object had pressed the earth and where a man had sat beside it. From this spot it was not possible to dispose of a body in the sea. Beneath it extended a fall of a hundred feet to broken ground, which again gave by sloping shelves to the water. Had a corpse been thrown over here, it must have challenged their sight beneath; and yet from this standpoint no sign of the vanished man or his burden appeared. But the zigzag path to the cliff top revealed neither any evidence of a weight being dragged upward nor the impression of the iron-shod foot. Fresh footprints there were, but they had been made by Brendon and Doria on the previous night. Now the police ascended, making careful examination of every turn in the way, and finally reached the summit a little after noon. It was a dizzy height, beetling over the sea beneath; but crags and buttresses broke out from the six hundred feet of precipice and any object thrown over from the crest of Hawk Beak Hill must have been arrested many times in its downward progress.
Inspector Damarell stopped to rest and flung himself panting on the close sward at the crown of the cliff.
"What do you think?" he asked Brendon; and the other having made a careful examination of the ground around them and scanned the peaks and ledges beneath, answered:
"He never came here—at any rate not until he had disposed of the body. It's the broken ground under the plateau we must search. There may be a way down that he knew. I guess he threw the body over, then scrambled down himself and covered it deep with stones. It's surely there—for the simple reason that it can't be anywhere else. We should have found out if he'd brought it to the top. And in my judgment, even if he wanted to do so, he would have lacked the physical strength. He must have spent himself getting it to the plateau, however strong he is, and then found that he could do no more. The body, therefore, should be hidden in the rocks below the plateau."
"We can leave it at that then, till we've had something to eat and drink," answered the inspector, and proceeding to the nearest point of the highroad, where a car already waited for them, they made a meal. The constable who drove the car had no news, but Brendon expected that information might await him at Dartmouth. He was convinced that on this occasion the object of their search could not long evade discovery.
They chained up the motor car, and the constable who had driven it joined them when they descended to explore the broken ground beneath the plateau.
"There's nothing more hateful to me than a murder without the body," declared Damarell, on the way down. "You don't even know if you're on firm ground to start with, and every step you take must hang upon a fact that you can't verify except by circumstantial evidence. Every step may in reality be a false one—and the nearer you appear to be to the truth, the farther you may be going away from it. A pint of blood needn't of necessity mean a murder; but this chap, Robert Redmayne, has a partiality for leaving red traces behind him."
The others listened and then they reached the plateau and went down to the stony space beneath. This was not difficult to reach. A dozen rough-and-ready ways presented themselves to a climber; but neither Brendon nor his companions could find the least indications that any other had recently descended.
Now they quartered out the stone-covered ground and, having first searched every superficial yard for indications of disturbance, proceeded to a methodical and very thorough hunt beneath the surface. The stones were moved and the space critically examined over every square foot, but not a shadow of evidence to show that the spot had been trodden or touched could be discovered. Brendon sought first immediately below the plateau, where the sack and its contents must have fallen, but nothing indicated such an event. The stones were naked and no stain of blood or indication of any intrusion upon the lonely spot rewarded the searchers. For three hours, until dusk began to deepen on the precipices above them, the men worked as skilfully and steadfastly as men might work. Then their fruitless task was done. Brendon's theory, so confidently proclaimed, had broken down and he confessed his failure frankly enough.
They climbed up together once more and reached the summit of the cliffs again. Here, by the main road, they met one or two civilians who had devoted the day to assisting the police; but not one of them reported any sight or rumour of the fugitive.
The entrance of "Crow's Nest" opened upon the highroad which took the police back to Dartmouth, and here Brendon delayed the car and descended alone down the coomb to the house that had so suddenly lost its master. The place seemed mourning and it was very silent. Mark inquired for Jenny and the frightened maid doubted whether she might be seen.
"The poor lady be cruel put about," she explained. "She says she brings evil fortune after her and wishes to God it was her that was dead and not poor master. Mr. Doria tried to comfort her a bit; but he couldn't and she told him to be gone. She's very near cried her eyes out of her head since morning."
"That does not sound much like Mrs. Pendean," he answered. "Where is she, and where is Doria?"
"She's in her room. He is writing letters. He says that he must look after new work pretty quick, because no doubt he won't be wanted here after a month from now."
"Ask Mrs. Pendean if she can see me a moment," he said, and the woman, left him to ascertain. But Brendon was disappointed. Jenny sent word that she could not see him to-day and hoped he would take occasion to call on the following morning, when he would find her more composed.
To this he could answer nothing and presently started to rejoin the car. Giuseppe overtook him from the house; but he could only report that the day had passed without event at "Crow's Nest."
"Nobody has come but a clergyman," he told Brendon, "and we have been careful to leave everything just as the old captain left it."
"I will see you to-morrow," promised Mark; then he rejoined the inspector and their car went on its way.
A surprise and a keen disappointment awaited them at Dartmouth. The day's work had produced no result whatever. Not a trace of Robert Redmayne was reported from anywhere and Inspector Damarell offered the former solution of suicide. But Brendon would not hear it now.
"He is no more dead this time than he was six months ago," he answered; "but he has some system of disguise, or concealment, that utterly defeats the ordinary methods of a man hunt. We must try bloodhounds to-morrow, though the scent is spoiled now and we can hardly hope for any useful results."
"Perhaps he'll write from Plymouth again as he did before," suggested the inspector.
Weary and out of spirits, Mark left the police station and went to his hotel. To be baffled was an experience not new to him and thus far he felt no more tribulation than a great cricketer, who occasionally fails and retires for a "duck," knowing that his second innings may still be told in three figures; but what concerned him was the double failure on the same case. He felt puzzled by events and still more puzzled by his own psychology, which seemed incapable of reacting as usual to the stimulus of mystery and the challenge of a problem, apparently ineluctable.
He felt that his wits were playing him false and, instead of cleaving some bold and original way to the heart of a difficulty, as was his wont, he could see no ray of light thrown by the candle of his own inspiration. Inspiration, in fact, he wholly lacked. Once only in the past—after an attack of influenza—had he felt so barren of initiative as now, so feeble and ineffective.
He fell asleep at last, thinking not of the vanished sailor, but Jenny Pendean. That she must suffer at her uncle's sudden death was natural and he had not been surprised to learn of her collapse. For she was sensitive; she had lately been through a terrible personal trial; and to find herself suddenly associated with another tragedy might well induce a nervous breakdown. Who would come to the rescue now? To whom would she look? Whither would she go?
Mark was early astir and with Inspector Damarell he organized an elaborate search system for the day. At nine o'clock a large party had set out, for another morning brought no news by telegram or telephone, and it was clear that Redmayne still continued free.
Brendon proceeded presently to "Crow's Nest," drawn thither solely by thoughts of Jenny, for whatever she might secretly think of Doria and feel toward him, it was certain that he could not be of any great support under present circumstances. Doria was essentially a fair-weather friend. Many were the things that Jenny would be called to do and, so far as Mark knew, there was none to assist her. He found her distressed but calm. She had telegraphed to her uncle in Italy and though she doubted whether he would risk return into an English winter, she hoped that he might do so.
"Everything is chaos," she said, "just as it was at Princetown. Uncle Bendigo told me only a few days before these things happened—when he had made up his mind that his brother Robert must be dead—that the law would not recognize his death for a certain period of years. And now we know that he is not dead but that poor Uncle Bendigo is. Yet the law will not recognize his death, either perhaps, seeing that he has not been found. Uncle Robert's papers and affairs were gone into and he left no will; so his property, when the law sanctions it, would have been divided between his brothers; but now I imagine it all belongs to my uncle in Italy; while, as for poor Uncle Bendigo, I expect that he has made a will, because he was such a methodical man; but what he intended to do with his house and money we cannot tell yet."
Jenny had nothing to say or suggest that could help Brendon and she was very nervous, desiring to leave the lonely habitation on the cliffs as quickly as possible; but she intended to await Albert Redmayne's decision.
"This will greatly upset him, I fear," she said. "He is now the last of 'the red Redmaynes,' as our family was called in Australia."
"Why the adjective?"
"Because we were always red. Every one of my grandfather's children had red hair, and so had he. His wife was also red—and the only living member of the next generation is red, too, as you see."
"You are not red. Your hair is a most wonderful auburn, if I may say so."
She showed no appreciation of the compliment.
"It will soon be grey," she answered.