"Now, sir; mind where you're going," came Tuke's hoarse whisper. "There's only a handrail in places, and a nasty drop if you fall."
The warning recalled Leslie to himself, and he gave his attention to the steep descent. In a little while they stood on the pebbly beach below, where the incoming tide was making gentle music on the smooth stones. No glimmer came across the dark sea to tell them whether the Cobra lay out yonder in the inky pall, but that meant nothing. Nugent, they knew, had given the captain orders to veil all lights before he arrived opposite the town.
Tuke produced two cardboard cylinders from under his coat, and, striking a match, applied it to the conical head of one of them. There was a spluttering fizzle, and the flare burst out into a brilliant blue flame that shone steadily seaward, but was hidden from the coastguard station and the parade by a jutting angle of the cliff wall. For two minutes it glowed, and when it flickered out he repeated the illumination with the green flare, carefully picking up the empty cases when his pyrotechnic display was over.
"There!" he whispered huskily. "Now all there is to do is to squat down and wait. The boss said the launch is a quick 'un to travel. If the steamer's no more than three miles out she ought to do it in twenty minutes—with the tide in her favour."
The forecast proved accurate. In a very little over the time mentioned the click-clack of an electric motor was heard approaching the shore from the gloom, and Leslie, catching up the small handbag which was all the luggage he had dared remove from his lodgings, went down to the edge of the waves.
CHAPTER XXI
THE TRAP CLOSES
Miss Sarah Dymmock threw down the piece of old-fashioned embroidery on which she had been engaged since dinner, yawning aggressively.
"I'm a sleepy old woman, and I shall go to bed," she remarked with a snap. "Young people nowadays are bad company, though I suppose I ought to make allowances for you, Vi, as a what-d'you-call-it."