"We will suppose him innocent," said the Commandant, "until we have better evidence that he is guilty. What was Leggo's next step?"
"He ran on smoking-hot to the house, the schoolmistress after him; up through the gardens to the terrace, where they met old Abe returning home from work. The schoolmistress went on to alarm the servants, while the two men made for the private landing, unmoored the Lord Proprietor's boat, and pulled across for Garland Town to break the news to me. But on the quay and along the streets they told it to a score of people, and it is spreading through the town like wildfire."
"Naturally." The Commandant had fetched and slipped on his great-coat, and stood buttoning it. He glanced at his watch. "If the constable does not turn up in a minute or so, we must start without him. Archelaus, run you down and call up Mr. Rogers. Ask him, with my compliments, to call out the coastguard——"
"Pardon me," Mr. Pope interrupted, "but that is unnecessary. Mr. Rogers has already started for Inniscaw in the jolly-boat, taking Leggo with him. They are to search the shore around Piper's Hole."
"Thank you," said the Commandant. "That was obviously the first step to take, and I am obliged to you for having thought of it so promptly."
Mr. Pope coughed apologetically. He had grown of a sudden very red in the face. "In point of fact," he confessed, "Mr. Rogers was at my house when the news came. We were—er—indulging in a quiet rubber."
The Commandant understood. Had the occasion been less serious, he might have smiled. Not since the night which brought Vashti to the Islands had he received an invitation to Mrs. Pope's parties.
"Ah, to be sure!" said he, quietly, reaching for his forage-cap; "I had forgotten that this was your whist-evening."
Mr. Pope coughed again awkwardly, and was about to make matters worse by further apology, but a rat-tat on the door prevented this, and Archelaus, hurrying out, admitted Dr. Bonaday, the physician of Garland Town, followed by John Ward, the constable, and old Abe.
Of these three old men you would have found it difficult at first sight to decide which was the eldest: and you have not made Dr. Bonaday's acquaintance until now; because it was unnecessary. As the saying went in the Islands, "the old doctor troubled about nobody, and nobody troubled about he"—that is, unless an Islander needed to be helped into the world or out of it. He was a bachelor, a recluse, and (albeit his neighbours were ignorant of this) a European authority on lichens and mosses. A small private income allowed him to indulge a habit of forgetting to charge for his professional services; and, on the strength of it, the Islanders forgave one who never remembered a face, and who, when summoned to a sick-bed, had to be guided thither by a messenger, lest he should knock at half a dozen doors in error by the way. There was a tradition in St. Hugh's that once, running from his surgery with a hot poultice, he had clapped it on the harbour-master, who was politely intercepting him to point out that another two strides would take him over the quay's edge into deep water. In person, Dr. Bonaday was remarkable for a completely bald head, a hooked nose, and a pair of vague, impercipient eyes, as of an owl astray and blinking in the sunlight.