"I think you've got a telephone in your hall," he said. "I'll just call up Norcaster and find out if they've heard anything. If they haven't—"
He shook his head and went out, and Copplestone glanced at the landlady.
"You say the cliffs are dangerous," he said. "Are they particularly so?"
"To people who don't know them, yes," she replied. "They ought to be protected, but then, of course, we don't get many tourists here, and the Scarhaven people know the danger spots well enough. Then again at the end of the south promontory there, beyond the Keep—"
"Is the Keep that high square tower amongst the woods?" asked
Copplestone.
"That's it—it's all that's left of the old castle," answered Mrs. Wooler. "Well, off the point beneath that, there's a group of rocks—you'd perhaps noticed them as you came down from the station? They've various names—there's the King, the Queen, the Sugar-Loaf, and so on. At low tide you can walk across to them. And of course, some people like to climb them. Now, they're particularly dangerous! On the Queen rock there's a great hole called the Devil's Spout, up which the sea rushes. Everybody wants to look over it, you know, and if a man was there alone, and his foot slipped, and he fell, why—"
Stafford came back, looking more cast down than ever.
"They've heard nothing there," he announced. "Come on—we'll go down and see if we can hear anything from any of the people. We'll call in and see you later, Mrs. Wooler, and if you can make any inquiries in the meantime, do. Look here," he went on, when he and Copplestone had got outside, "you take this south side of the bay, and I'll take the north. Ask anybody you see—any likely person—fishermen and so on. Then come back here. And if we've heard nothing—"
He shook his head significantly, as he turned away, and Copplestone, taking the other direction, felt that the manager's despondency was influencing himself. A sudden disappearance of this sort was surely not to be explained easily—nothing but exceptional happenings could have kept Bassett Oliver from the scene of his week's labours. There must have been an accident—it needed little imagination to conjure up its easy occurrence. A too careless step, a too near approach, a loose stone, a sudden giving way of crumbling soil, the shifting of an already detached rock—any of these things might happen, and then—but the thought of what might follow cast a greyer tint over the already cold and grey sea.
He went on amongst the old cottages and fishing huts which lay at the foot of the wooded heights on the tops of whose pines and firs the gaunt ruins of the old Keep seemed to stand sentinel. He made inquiry at open doors and of little groups of men gathered on the quay and by the drawn-up boats—nobody knew anything. According to what they told him, most of these people had been out and about all the previous afternoon; it had been a particularly fine day, that Sunday, and they had all been out of doors, on the quay and the shore, in the sunshine. But nobody had any recollection of the man described, and Copplestone came to the conclusion that Oliver had not chosen that side of the bay. There was, however, one objection to that theory—so far as he could judge, that side was certainly the more attractive. And he himself went on to the end of it—on until he had left quay and village far behind, and had come to a spit of sand which ran out into the sea exactly opposite the group of rocks of which Mrs. Wooler had spoken. There they lay, rising out of the surf like great monsters, a half-mile from where he stood. The tide was out at that time, and between him and them stretched a shining expanse of glittering wet sand. And, coming straight towards him across it, Copplestone saw the slim and graceful figure of a girl.