'Will you?' I asked again.
'Maybe,' she said very quietly.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. She looked up, startled. They didn't turn off towards the front door but came straight on to the kitchen. The door opened. It was Old Manack. He stopped there in the doorway. His pale eyes glittered in the lamplight. My hands clenched automatically and I felt a violent desire to take him by his beard and fling him over Botallack Head where my mother had gone. He must have seen the violence in my eyes, for he stared at me as though fascinated by what he saw. A sound broke through my clenched teeth. It wasn't speech, it was just a sound. Fear snowed in his eyes, but only for a second. Then they narrowed cunningly and I swear he smiled in his beard. I started towards him then. I don't know what I intended to do, but I wanted to get hold of him. Kitty caught hold of my arm and he quickly closed the door. I stood there, sweating in the warm kitchen, and listening to his footsteps going down the corridor to the front door.
'Don't do anything, please,' Kitty said. 'Go back to Wheal Garth. I'll come down to you there, just as soon as I've cleared the supper things away. I promise,' she added.
I looked down at her. I'd forgotten all about my need of her in that sudden surge of rage. I could feel her body close against me as she held my arm. She stepped back. I suddenly felt cold and drained. She was watching me, wondering what I was going to do. Her face was pale and her breath was coming fast through her half-open lips. 'Guess I'd better go,' I said. 'I'll wait for you at the mine.'
She nodded and turned away towards the range. I went out again into the moonlight. I could hear Friar's voice behind the curtained windows of the outhouse dining-room. I went round the house and started towards Wheal Garth. And then I stopped. Directly ahead of me, in black silhouette against the silver of the sea, I saw Old Manack going down towards the mine.
My muscles tensed. If the swine were going down the mine. I'd have him there. But he wouldn't be such a fool. Surely he wouldn't be such a fool. I waited tense with excitement, until his figure disappeared down the dip of the slope. I crossed the old mine workings then and from the top of the slope I watched him making for the sheds. Once he stopped and looked back almost as though he feared I might be following him. I dropped close to the ground. He hadn't seen me, for he went on and, when he reached the mine, he went into the store shed. I scrambled down the slope. When he came out again, I was concealed amongst the gorse that surrounded the shaft to the hideout. He had a helmet and overalls on and he carried a lamp. But he didn't go to the hoist. He went on down the slope.
He was making straight for the shaft he used — the shaft where his wife had been killed. The rim of its protecting wall showed like a ghostly circle amongst the brambles. I could have laughed aloud. To play right into my hands like this! I'd get the truth from him now. I'd wring it out of him down there in the bowels of his own damned mine.
The old man had reached the top of the shaft now. He turned and glanced about him. It was a furtive glance. He wanted to be unobserved. What the hell was he doing going down the mine at this time of night? And why did he use that shaft? What fatal fascination was there for him in that place? And then another thought flashed into my mind. A man who could cold-bloodedly throw a dog down a shaft was capable of anything. That thought was to recur more than once before the night was out.
Satisfied that no one was watching him, Manack climbed over the protecting wall. He stood for a moment on the inside, his head and shoulders visible as he looked up towards the house. Then he disappeared.