Miranda of the Balcony: A Story

by A. E. W. Mason

Miranda made a sign of assent.

"Those three boats had been cast away. Two of them belonged to respectable firms, the third to Ralph Warriner. It would of course be very convenient for Ralph Warriner, under the circumstances, to be reputed dead and yet to be alive with a boat in hand, so to speak. On the other side, would it profit either of the two respectable firms to spread a false report that one of their boats had been cast away? Hardly; besides, it would of course be to Warriner's advantage, from the point of view of concealment, to change the rig and the name of his boat. It was all inference and guess-work, no doubt. Charnock, for instance, might have been entirely wrong; the Tarifa might never have been anything but the Tarifa and a brigantine; but the inference and the guess-work all pointed the one way, and I own that my interest was rapidly changing to excitement. My suspicions were strengthened by the behaviour of the Tarifa herself. No news of her approach was recorded in the papers. She didn't make any unnecessary noise about the port she was bound for, nor had she the manners to pass the time of day with any of Lloyd's signal-stations. The Tarifa's business began to provoke my curiosity. Here was (shall we say?) a needless lack of ceremony to begin with. It didn't seem as if the Tarifa had many anxious friends awaiting her arrival. Besides that, supposing that my suspicions were right, that the Tarifa was the Ten Brothers masquerading under another name, and that perhaps Ralph Warriner was on board, it stood to reason Ralph Warriner would not risk his skin in an English port, without a better reason than a cargo of trade. Comprenny, Mrs. Warriner? I was guessing, conjecturing, inferring; I had no knowledge. So I thought the cargo of the Tarifa was the right end of the stick to hang on to. If I could know the truth about that, I should be in a better position to guess whether it had anything to do with Ralph Warriner. Is that clear?"

It was clear enough to Miranda, who already felt herself enmeshed in the net of this man's ingenious deductions. "Yes," she said.

"Very well. From the brigantine's course, she was evidently making for one of the western harbours. I lay low in Plymouth for a couple of days, and read the shipping news. That wasn't all I did during those two days, though. I went to the Free Library besides, overhauled the file of the Western Morning News and assimilated information about the inquest at St. Mary's. The faceless mariner chucked up on Rosevear struck one as interesting. I noticed too that there had been a good many wrecks in the Channel during the heavy weather and the fog just about that time. But before I had come to any conclusion, I opened my newspaper on the third morning and read that the Tarifa had dropped her anchor at Falmouth. I took the first train out of Plymouth, and sure enough I picked the Tarifa up in Falmouth docks. Then I made friends with the port-officers, but I got never a glimpse of Ralph Warriner."

Miranda's hopes revived. She knew very well that Ralph Warriner was not at that time in Falmouth. For the moment, however, she let Wilbraham run on.

"I frankly admit that my hopes sank a little," he continued. "Of course Warriner might have been put ashore; but it seemed to me impossible to obtain sufficient certainty of my suspicions unless I actually clapped eyes on him."

Miranda agreed, and her prospects of escaping from this man's clutches showed brighter; for she was not in a mood of sufficient calmness to enable her to realise that Wilbraham would hardly have been so frank, if he had not by now at all events acquired absolute certainty.

"My hopes were to sink yet more," Wilbraham continued. "The brigantine passed for a tramp out from Tarifa with a cargo of fruit. I saw that cargo unloaded. There was no pretence about it; it was a full cargo of fruit. The boat was sailing back to Tarifa with a cargo of alkali, and I saw that cargo stowed away in her hold. Mrs. Warriner, my spirits began to revive. That cargo of alkali was most uncommon small; the profit on it wouldn't have paid the decky's wages. Again I inferred. I inferred that the alkali was a blind, and that the Tarifa meant to pick up a cargo of another sort somewhere along the coast, though what the cargo would be I could not for the life of me imagine."

"But it is all guess-work," said Miranda, with an indifference which she was far from feeling.

"I learned one piece of solid cheering information from my friends the port-officers," retorted Wilbraham. "The Tarifa's papers were all quite recent, and yet she was an old boat. She was supposed to be owned by her master."