"No," said I; "but I have come on Cullen Mayle's business."
The boy leaned out of the window and peered into my face. But voices were raised in the room beyond this cupboard, and a woman's voice cried out, "Dick, Dick!"
"That's mother," said Dick to me. "Wait! I will come out to you."
He closed the window, and I lay down again in the grass, and waited there for perhaps an hour. A mist was coming up from the sea and thickening about the island; the starlight was obscured; wreaths of smoke, it seemed, came in puffs between myself and the house, and at last I heard the rustling of feet in the grass.
"Dick," said I in a whisper, and the lad came to me.
"I remember you," he said. "You were at Lieutenant Clutterbuck's. Why have you come?"
"Upon my word," said I, "I should find it difficult to tell you."
Indeed, it would have taken me half the night to explain the motives which had conjoined to this end.
"And now that you are come, what is it you mean to do?"
"Dick," I returned, "you ask the most disconcerting questions. You tramp up to London with a wild story of a house watched----"