Nowhere could Freda have found a person better able to get her out of her difficulty. Even Mrs. Bean gave a sigh of relief, after the first moment of dismay at this unexpected intrusion of a stranger, on finding the burden of her responsibility thus suddenly lightened. Crispin would never dare do further harm to John Thurley while this “outsider” was about. The very personality of the quiet, chirpingly cheerful middle-aged woman, with her conversation largely made up of texts and quotations from the book of Common Prayer, her placid commonplaces, and her prosaic disbelief in any occurrence out of the common was healing and healthful to these two women who had been living under a volcano of crime and dread. When John Thurley raved in her presence of smuggling and murder, the little lady placidly ascribed his utterances to the effects of injudicious reading; when she heard a mysterious noise in the night which the other watchers knew too well how to account for, no arguments would have been strong enough to shake her conviction that it was caused by rats behind the wainscotting.
She brought in her train another safeguard for the sick man; the Reverend Berkeley, who missed his wife’s ministrations on the one hand, but was delighted at the opportunity of rummaging in the old house on the other, was constant in his visits; so that under this pastoral surveillance no bodily harm to the sick man could be attempted; and Crispin, who, to Freda’s horror, still lurked about the house, dared not show his face except to his wife.
John Thurley recovered rapidly; Mrs. Staynes soon gave up her watching for occasional visits, and indeed there seemed no reason why he should not go about his business. He must have been dull too, one would have thought; for Freda, when he came downstairs, avoided him as much as possible, dreading the fatal knowledge he possessed. She had never, since that eventful night on the scaur, been able to meet her father again, to warn him to keep out of the way of his danger. Every night now she hid herself in the secret portion of the house, watching and waiting for him. But he never came. Every day she would go out to the cliff’s edge, looking out for the yacht; and then she would roam about the Abbey ruins, and listen at the door of the tower in the north transept, hoping to hear his voice or his tread. It was all in vain.
At last one day, when Thurley had been downstairs nearly a week, he met her flying through one of the passages, and asked if she would speak with him.
“I will only keep you a few minutes,” he said humbly, apologetically. “I am going away. I must go away.”
Freda began to tremble. She dreaded some revelation about her father, and felt that she must have a little while to prepare herself for what she might have to hear, and for the entreaties she must make.
“I—I have got to go and help Mrs. Bean now,” she said in a frightened voice. “Won’t it do this afternoon? I mean——”
She blushed and stammered, afraid that she seemed rude; but John Thurley answered at once eagerly:
“This afternoon will do perfectly.”
Freda spent the intervening hours partly in prayer, partly in trying to devise entreaties which would move him to spare her father. In order to put off the evil hour of the interview, she roamed about the ruined church, supposing that Thurley was where he usually spent his time, in the library. Habit took her to the transept tower. She had not, this time, her usual thought of trying to meet her father; it was through custom, rather than by intention, that she leaned against the wooden door. To her surprise, it gave way, and she only just missed falling on her back. She forgot all about John Thurley in her excitement. This was only the second time she had found the door open, and she was convinced that there must be some one about. She listened at the opening, first of the one underground passage and then of the other, but could hear no sound in either. Should she dare to go down into the one which led to the cliff?