The Man from the Clouds

by J. Storer Clouston

His eyebrows rose slightly.

"If you prefer to light a cigar with a wax match I daresay I can find one."

"If Mr. Merton doesn't mind waiting for half an hour perhaps I might discover a box in the store room," said Miss Rendall, and she added demurely, "beside the champagne."

My only consolation was that I was making an idiot of myself in a good cause.

VIII

SUNDAY

I said good-night early that evening and did a heap of thinking in my bed-room. Nothing that seems to me now to be worth recording had been said or done since luncheon. I went for a solitary walk in the afternoon, as much to carry out the part of one with some business in the isle as for any other reason. It is true I actually did do some business in the way of accosting a few inhabitants and trying tactfully to convey a suspicious impression. None of them, however, had seemed in the least likely to belong to the gang I was after, and the sheep and wax match conundrums had left them cold. I was the less concerned at this since I had realised that the day was Saturday. To-morrow in church I meant to take stock of the islanders—and give them a chance of taking stock of me.

That night my thoughts ran chiefly on my host and hostess. I had learnt a few more facts about them and these I now put together to see what picture they suggested. In the first place, the Rendalls were an ancient family in these parts and had owned their property for some centuries. As all my prejudices ran in favour of old families, old port, and old furniture, this was so far reassuring.

On the other hand, Mr. Rendall had apparently lived much abroad but he dropped no hint as to whether he had sojourned in foreign parts for reasons of pleasure, health, or business. In fact he was close as a clam on the subject, and, indeed, on every other subject. Add to this that I had heard he was hard up, that he had no wife to look after him, and that he evidently took a caustic rather than an enthusiastic view of life, and in my present state of mind there seemed a prima facie case for suspicion. Anyhow he was a man to be watched.

As to his daughter, I had learned that her name was Jean, that she had been to school at a somewhat select seminary which I chanced to have heard of, and that she had finished her education a couple of years ago in Switzerland.