I wondered.
When I set out upon the return journey I took another route. I found from the landlord that by skirting the coast for a mile in the direction of St. Ives I could come upon a moorland path that would take me to the little railway-station of St. Erth. I could then catch a train for Penzance. My ostensible reason was to vary my walk, my real one that by this change of plan I should pass by and have a view of Tregeraint Mine and the Manor House.
"Not that you'll see much or get close," said Mr. Trewhella.
"How is that?" I asked.
"I told you that Mr. Helzephron"—apparently the hawk-faced man had dropped his military title in Cornwall—"do make a mystery of his peddling mine. He goes further than that. The mine buildings and the house are surrounded by two fences of barbed-wire and the Manor by a high wall. 'Trespassers,' notice boards belong to say, 'will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law'!"
"Well, I shan't attempt to trespass, Mr. Trewhella!"
The landlord laughed. "Mine prospectin's not in the way of a larned gentleman like yourself. Maybe it's as well. Mr. Helzephron has got two dogs he turns out at night, and terrible ugly customers they be. Mr. Vargus do tell me that they be Tibetan mastiffs, which am the largest dogs in the world. They look like a sour-faced Newfoundland with heavy ears, only bigger."
I tramped away from "The Miners' Arms." Although I recognized the fact that we were only at the fringe of discovery, my mind was made up. Thick darkness surrounded me, but I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Major Helzephron, and no other, was the man for whom the whole world was hunting.
And as I thought of him and the crew of lost and reckless men who did his will, the fair landscape seemed to darken, the sweet airs to be tainted....