The Smuggler's Cave

by George A. Birmingham

Here Sir Evelyn's guardian angel smiled again. How far these beings arrange our future for us is uncertain, but there is no doubt that they know what is going to happen to us some time ahead. When they hear us asserting confidently that we are going to do something, or not going to do it, they are amused, being aware that our plans have very little to do with what actually happens. Sir Evelyn's angel knew perfectly well that his ward would lunch that day at the vicarage, that he would meet Mrs. Eames, and that consequences of the most unexpected kind would follow. His smile died wholly away when he reflected that it would be his business to extricate Sir Evelyn from the tangled difficulties in which he was soon to be involved, which began with his visit to the Hailey Compton Vicarage.

Chapter II

Sir Evelyn left the Anchor Inn, took his camera from the car and set out on the way which Hinton had described to him.

It was not a very pleasant way. It first passed along the village street which smelt of decaying fish and was strewed with empty lobster pots, broken spars and disused oars. Here he was stared at with unblinking hostility by a number of men who leaned against the walls of cottages with their hands in their pockets. He was surveyed apparently with amused dislike by women who came to the doors with babies in their arms. He would have been giggled at by children if they had not all been shut up at school at that hour.

Having reached the end of the street he skirted a slimy and very smelly boat haven beyond which he reached a space of coarse grass. Here nets were spread out to dry and long rows of geese paraded solemnly. Sir Evelyn picked his way among the nets and tried to be indifferent to the geese which stretched out their necks and hissed at him. Having crossed the grass he climbed the sea wall and dropped down on a stony beach. It was a disagreeable beach covered with round white stones. Some of these were about the size of potatoes. They rolled when Sir Evelyn trod on them and he ran some risk of spraining his ankles. Others were larger, about the size of field turnips, and they were coated with pale green weed. Sir Evelyn slipped when he walked on one of them.

At the back, the shoreward end of the beach, the cliffs rose abruptly to a plateau on which the church stood. A hundred yards or so from the village green was the cave. Sir Evelyn, stumbling doggedly on, reached it slightly out of breath.

A surprise waited him. Under the huge arch which formed the entrance of the cave is a pool, ten or twelve feet deep, large enough to hold a fair sized fishing smack. The rocks at the side of the pool are as steep as if they had been cut away to form a dock or a swimming bath. The water is bright green and so clear that the pebbles at the bottom can be plainly seen.

Sir Evelyn unstrapped his camera, preparing to photograph the entrance of the cave. He saw to his annoyance that he was not alone. A woman was standing at the far side of the pool. She wore a bright red bathing dress and a blue waterproof cap. At the moment when Sir Evelyn caught sight of her she was poised for a plunge into the green water.

An imaginative and slightly short-sighted man might have fancied himself unexpectedly blessed with a vision of a mermaid or some other kind of water nymph. The great arch of the cave, the gloomy hollow beyond it, the clear water and the shining rock, formed a natural and proper haunt for a marine damsel. But Sir Evelyn was not romantic. Men who rise to eminence in politics are almost always realists. And he was not short-sighted. He could see perfectly well that the lady on the rock had a sturdy figure and unusually thick legs. All nymphs, woodland or marine, are slim creatures and young. The lady on the rock was not very young, but if he had had any doubt about what she was her greeting would have dispelled it.

"Hallo!" she shouted.