"This must be investigated immediately," she declared. "Dulcie, fetch a candle and matches, and you must both accompany me to this cave. You say Gerda has gone on there alone?"
Miss Birks took the affair gravely. She appeared very much concerned, even alarmed. She hurried off at once with the girls to the kitchen-garden.
They led the way down the narrow staircase cut in the cliff, and across the beach and over the rocks. At the entrance to the cave they both uttered a sharp exclamation, for Gerda stood there in an attitude of hesitation, as if unable to make up her mind whether to enter or no. She turned red, and white, and then red again to the tips of her ears when she saw that she was discovered, but she offered no explanation of her presence there. She did not even speak.
"Girls," said Miss Birks, "I think it is highly desirable and necessary that we should follow this passage into the room which I am told is beyond. Deirdre, you go first, with this candle, then Dulcie—Gerda, give me your candle, and walk just in front of me."
Policing the three in the rear, the Principal gave nobody an opportunity to escape. She had her own reasons for her conduct, which at present she did not choose to explain. With a hand on Gerda's shoulder, she forced that unwilling explorer along, and she urged an occasional caution on Deirdre. They had reached the cavern, and now, opening the small inner door, flashed their candles into the room. The result was startling.
On the bed reclined a figure, which, at sight of the light, sprang up with the cry of a hare in a trap—a man, unkempt, ragged, and dirty, bearing the impress of tramp written plainly upon his haggard, unshaven countenance. He darted wildly forward, gazed up at the strangers regarding him, then threw himself on a chair, and buried his face in his hands.
Gerda gave a long sigh of supreme relief. It was evidently not at all what she had expected to see.
"I'm done!" whimpered the tramp. "Send for the bobbies if you like. I'll go quiet."
"You must first tell me what you are doing here," said Miss Birks, stepping down into the room. "Then I can decide whether or no it is necessary to call in the police. Who are you? And where do you come from?"
"I knowed this passage when I was a boy," was the whining reply. "We used to dare each other to go up it, but the door at the end was firm shut. Then when I come back, down on my luck, and without a penny in my pocket to pay for a lodging, I thought I'd at least spend a night there under cover. I'd a bit of candle and a few matches, so I found my way along easy, and there! if the door at the end wasn't broke open, and the place waitin' all ready for me—bed, kettle, cooking-stove, frying-pan, cup and saucer, and all the rest of it, just as if someone 'ad put 'em there a purpose. I wasn't long in takin' possession, and I've lived here five days, and done nobody no harm. I didn't take nothing from the house either, except a bit of bread and butter last night when I felt starving. T'other days I'd found a job on the quay, and was able to buy myself victuals."