"He can't be staying at the 'Strand,'" thought O'Brien. "I am the only visitor at the 'Strand.' And yet where can he be going? No person living in the village would dream of knocking up M'Grath at such an hour except in a matter of life and death, and M'Grath doesn't sell drugs."
They were now getting near the end of the houses. The "Strand" was the last building in the village. The garden at its rear climbed partly up the slope of the downs. The nearest dwelling-place beyond the hotel was Kilcash House, the late Mr. Davenport's home. That house stood a mile back from the cliff, and the shortest line from it to the sea would bring one to the Black Rock.
As O'Brien saw the man pass the last house of the terrace and approach the hotel, he watched no longer, but turned his eyes out for one last look at the sea, with the reflection, "There is nowhere else for him but the 'Strand'--unless," he thought, with a smile, "he is going to visit our old friend Fahey at the Black Rock. A nice quiet place to spend an evening like this would be the Puffing Hole."
He shuddered. Even here, two miles away from it, and within a few yards of his comfortable room, with lamps and a fire, and absolute security from the sea, it was not possible to think of that awful Hole unmoved. Although the tide was receding, it was higher than when he and Jim Phelan had been at the Rock. The water had then been flung up a hundred feet into the air. Now, no doubt, it was mounting a hundred and fifty feet--ay, two hundred feet, in a solid, unbroken, bent column! What a hideous fate it would be to stand down on that fatal rock and, with the certainty of immediate destruction, watch that dire column mount up into the air! Ugh! It wasn't a thing to think of just now. He had had enough of the sea and storm for one day. He'd go in and turn up the lamps, and fit himself into an easy-chair in front of the fire, and mix a tumbler of punch and smoke a cigar, and forget all about the confounded sea, except that it was out here foaming and fuming away, wholly unable to get at him.
He looked towards the hotel. The man who had come out of M'Grath's ought by this time to have got within its hospitable walls. No one was to be seen stirring near it.
"Ah, as I thought!" mused O'Brien complaisantly. "But what can they have wanted from M'Grath's at the 'Strand' at this hour of the night? And now that I think of it, the whole male force attached to the house in any capacity consists of old Billy Coyne, the stable man, and myself. I've not been in M'Grath's buying things--that is, at least, not with my knowledge and consent. But then this is a queer place, where queer things happen now and then."
He turned to cross the road, but was again brought to a standstill by a fierce gust of wind and dash of spray. While he was holding on his hat, his face was turned towards the pathway leading to the downs high above. He shook the spray off him, and was on the point of moving away when his eyes caught something moving upward and forward on that path. What the object was he could not determine, for the light was poor and uncertain, and the distance considerable. One moment he thought it was a pony; the next it seemed to resemble a human being. He stood still a minute or two, long enough to make sure he could not come to a conclusion, as the thing continued to recede and the light did not improve.
He shrugged his shoulders. The affair was not of the least moment to him. He crossed the road and entered the hotel. He was in the act of taking off his overcoat in the hall when he caught sight of old Billy Coyne, who in the winter acted as handy man about the place, and discharged now and then the functions of waiter and boots.
"Who came in just now, Billy?" he asked.
"Sorrow a soul, sir," answered the old man, helping O'Brien with the coat.