Witness to the Deed

by George Manville Fenn

It was with throbbing heart that he adjusted it, and brought it to bear upon the pretty little château high upon the cliff, covered with creepers, and with its terrace garden a mass of flowers.

He scanned window after window, but not a soul was visible, and after a time he brought it to bear on the fisher’s cottage at the foot of the cliff, where he saw the smoke curling up clear and blue, though it was quite a mile away. Dale’s brawny French nurse stood outside in the early morning sunshine knitting. The fisherman was at his boat making some repairs, where it lay bottom upward, and his wife was going in and out busy over household affairs, but it was too early for sign of the other occupants.

After a time Stratton was summoned to breakfast, and, after swallowing a little bread and coffee hastily, he made sure that the car and driver were ready, and with the excitement growing, returned to his place of observation with the glass, where he was seen by the landlady, who remarked to herself how anxious monsieur was about his friend.

At that moment the glass was trembling, and its eyepiece seemed blurred; for it was fixed upon the figure of a tall, graceful woman, standing outside one of the windows in the terrace garden of the little château, with a hand raised to shade her eyes, as she looked along the coast line, but appeared to be gazing straight at where Stratton watched her with the glass.

One minute of delirious joy as he observed her features, then all was blurred, and he closed up the glass; he dared not gaze, for his brain swam, and when the insane desire to look once more came over him, and he yielded, the figure in its soft, white, clinging drapery, was gone, and he sternly turned the glass upon the cottage, to watch for the coming of Brettison, till his eyes refused to distinguish the place.

He felt that they ought to be on their way now, while the occupants of the house above were at their morning meal; but there was still no sign, and another hour passed full of agony for Stratton, till he forced himself to believe that Brettison was acting for the best, and that there must be good reason for his keeping back.

He took the glass again, and concluded why his friend had not come; for he saw a group now upon the terrace, and directly after could trace their descent beyond the cottage to the sands—the admiral first, with Myra leaning on his arm, then the stately figure of Miss Jerrold, and lastly Edie and Guest; and all so close to him that he could almost read the expression on their features as they stopped and walked past the cottage as if about to come in his direction.

Stratton’s heart beat, for there was the possibility of Barron appearing at the cottage door, but they turned again, went on toward the south-east and soon disappeared beyond the rocks which lay scattered along the shore.

“Brettison will be here directly,” thought Stratton, and after watching for a few minutes a thought struck him: they would perhaps come along the path at the top of the cliff, and in the belief that this might be so he hurried out to warn the car driver to be ready.

Hardly had he returned to his room when the landlady appeared to say that a boy was there to deliver a message to him alone, and, upon going out, a heavy looking peasant announced that he was to go on to the cottage.