"Only the beginning, I'm afraid. This morning I interview my last old man—to find of course he wasn't the fellow I was after. I interviewed him on the usual subject—ancient traditions of the island, and from that we passed on to the latest tradition, the legend of the mysterious visitor last August. He told me all about it, with many embellishments. However he was shrewd enough not to believe all he heard, and to show me what absurd stories are put about, he informed me that his own small grand-daughter, aged six, had declared that she had seen the mysterious visitor, only she described him as having a white beard and funny spectacles. I asked him exactly where this phenomenon had been observed, and by Jingo, Jack, it was at the very place I met him; only when she saw him he had left the road and was hurrying down to the sea. She described him as running, which finally demolished her reputation for truthfulness, for as her grandfather observed, men of his age don't run. But that was my friend right enough!"
"Heading for the sea?"
"For the beach, I take it. You see you can pop over the edge almost anywhere along that shore, and get out of sight among the rocks in a moment. I presume he squatted down there, pocketed his spectacles and beard, took off his disreputable overcoat, and either hid it or possibly pinned up the skirts and put it on under his other coat, and walked off looking like—well, that's the rub, what did he look like then? And that's just where I seem no forrader."
"Still, this is something."
"Yes, and I suppose we ought to deduce something more from the episode. I've already concluded that the high piping voice he used might well have concealed an accent, and I've also decided from what I've heard of the local language since that he hadn't the native intonation."
"And he headed for the beach," added my cousin. "Therefore he certainly did not come from any house in the near neighbourhood."
"That puts the doctor's house out of court, if you're right. But he may possibly have thought it better not to do his dressing up at home."
"I see you've still got you knife into O'Brien!" laughed my cousin. "But
I think my notion is the likeliest—"
He broke off suddenly and we instinctively moved a pace further apart. A figure had appeared round a turn of the road just ahead of us, a trim, dainty figure, delightful to see in such a place, but a little disconcerting to see so suddenly and so close to us. It was Jean Rendall, looking her best, but not, it seemed to me, quite in the right place.
Had she noticed anything? There was not a sign of it in her greeting. She gave us both one of her quick smiles, and as Jack pulled up to speak to her, she stopped too, and in talking to him, I noticed afresh how full of expression those neatly chiselled, rather petite, features became when she talked, and what a charming little air of knowing her way about the world she had. Young though she was, I could see in her very clearly either a valuable friend or a dangerous enemy—and what an easy girl to fall in love with, had circumstances been very different!