“There may be nothing in it,” I murmured, “and yet why does he remain away? Suppose Thoyne and Clevedon quarrelled over Kitty and young Billy interfered—”
“I won’t say it is impossible,” Pepster interposed, “and if it had been a bullet or a blow from a fist or a stick I might have looked at it seriously, but poison is not Billy Clevedon’s line.”
“One never knows—there are no such things as impossibilities. There is a story behind all this.”
Pepster sat for some minutes gazing meditatively into the fire.
“There is a story behind it—yes,” he said. “Do you really think young Clevedon—?”
I smiled at that and shook my head.
“So far,” I said, “we have brought him to Dublin and that is a long way from Cartordale.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Pepster agreed. “We must bring him a bit nearer home. I wonder where Tulmin is.”
“You trot off to Dublin and look up young Billy,” I replied. “I will hang about here for a day or two and see what I can pick up.”
Ilbay, as I think I have already said, consists only of a score or so of tiny cottages clustered together at the foot of a tall cliff to the left of the jetty, while to the right a rough road goes upwards through what seems to be a narrow valley running inland. I determined upon a walk, not that I expected to discover anything thereabout, since the presence of the Sunrise at Ilbay appeared to be due more to accident than design. When I had been walking about half an hour I met an old white-headed man, who had apparently emerged from a jumble of hillocks and rocks by the roadside where perhaps he had been resting. He stood leaning heavily on his stick and surveying me with bleared, age-dimmed eyes which, however, showed no surprise nor any other interpretable sentiment.