He let the engine go, the car leaped forward, and he drove furiously until he reached the Dryholm lodge, for he wanted to find out if his supposition was correct. When he put the car into the garage a man was cleaning a limousine.
"I'm afraid I have given you another job," Mordaunt said. "You haven't got the big car properly polished yet."
"She got very wet when I took Mr. Dearham to town."
"It was a bad day. Did he keep you waiting in the rain?"
"I was outside the lawyers' office for an hour," the man replied.
Mordaunt frowned as he went to the house. The reason for Holbrook's caution was plain, and if Janet Halliday imagined Bernard meant to leave Jim nothing, she was much deceived. Bernard had probably meant to deceive her, but Mordaunt thought he would not meddle. He went to his room and stopped for some time, smoking and pondering.
A few days afterwards, Jim and Jake, wearing long waders and yellow oilskins, crept up a hollow in the sands. It was about nine o'clock in the evening, they were a mile from land, and light mist drifted about the bay, but the moon shone through. The tide was flowing, the water rippled noisily in the channel, and flakes of muddy foam and trailing weed floated past. The harsh cry of a black-backed gull rang across the flats and small wading birds whistled about the water's edge. Farther off, the clanging call of black geese came out of the mist.
Jim carried a heavy ten-bore gun and his feet sank in the mud as he crept quietly up the hollow. He liked this rough shooting, and now and then Jake and he went out at nights. When one had hunted fierce game in Canada, shooting driven pheasants was tame sport, and the beaters found the birds; but on the sands one must match one's intelligence against the instinctive cunning of the ducks and geese. Besides, there was some risk that gave the thing a spice. Belts of sand were dangerously soft and the tides were treacherous. Sometimes they rose faster than one reckoned.
"The brant-geese can't be far off," he remarked presently. "It's a pretty big gaggle and I expect some of the fat gray-lag are feeding with them."
Jake looked at the water. "If you want a shot, I guess you'll go on; but if I'd been alone, I'd have started home some time since. The tide's rising fast."