What should he do? What ought his next step to be? His mind was all in amaze of doubt and terror and perplexity. Should he hurry off to London by the first train, secure all his available property, shut up his house in Spur Alley, and drop quietly out of sight where no possible search for him could be made? Or should he stay and brave out everything?
Presently he began to feel very lonely among the dim shadows of the silent lane. He fancied that he heard voices whispering, and the faint rustle of garments, as if someone were watching him stealthily through the foliage at his back. He looked round with a shudder, and then he rose and walked swiftly forward. In a little while the lane took him to a rising ground that overlooked the village and the sea. On his right, and no great distance away, rose the cliff on the summit of which was built the hotel where Byrne and Miriam were staying. Several of the windows were lighted up. Which were the windows of Miriam's room, he wondered? In the midst of all his doubts and fears for his own safety, he could not help thinking about the girl who had played such a short but important part in the strange drama of his life. He had no bitterer thought, even at this bitter hour, than the knowledge that this girl, whom he had learnt to love so passionately, had not only never cared for him, but had duped him from the very first; that all her smiles and looks and words had been utterly false; that it was her hand, and hers alone, that had struck him down; that but for her no harm could have happened to him; that but for her, the silver-clamped box, with its damning evidence, would have rested till doomsday at the bottom of the sea.
Without knowing or caring whither it might lead him, he had unconsciously taken a footpath which brought him presently to a little side wicket that opened into the grounds of the hotel. From the wicket a winding path led upward through thick clumps of evergreens and brushwood to the house. There was for him, in his present mood, a sort of fascination, a grim satisfaction, in the thought of being so near these cunning enemies of his, who seemed so thoroughly bent on hunting him down, while all the time they believed him to be hundreds of miles away. He had little or no sense of present fear upon him. His dread lay in the unknown future. The next blow that would be struck at him would not be struck here, but in London. So long as these people stayed in Wales, he was safe. They had done their worst for a little time to come.
He passed through the wicket, but as soon as he found himself in the grounds of the hotel, he diverged from the pathway on to the grass, where his footsteps were inaudible, and where the evergreens would shelter him from the view of any passer-by. But perfect quiet reigned around; not a sign of life was anywhere visible. No portion of the hotel could be seen from where he was now, but he knew in which direction it lay; and without knowing or caring to think why he did so, he kept pressing slowly forward and upward, till at length he emerged from the shrubbery into a more open part of the grounds, and therein the starlight he could see the big white building straight before him.
On one side, the hotel was built close up to the edge of the cliff, which here sloped down to the beach, and the base of which was washed by every tide. Huge boulders and jagged pieces of rock protruded here and there from the face of the cliff; but these rugged features were softened and harmonized by the numerous tufts of broom and dwarf brushwood that grew among and around them, and by the soft, green mosses and many-coloured lichens that nestled between them, and crept lovingly over them, and made them beautiful with a beauty that was other than their own. Up the face of this cliff a goat or a chamois might probably have climbed by leaping from rock to rock, or from one clump of brushwood to another; but no human foot had ever been known to venture up or down it.
It was now dark, and these more minute features of the scene were invisible to Max Van Duren. All that he could discern was, that the hotel was built close to the edge of the cliff, at the bottom of which cliff the tide was now washing heavily in with the noise of low thunder.
Having satisfied himself that there was no one about, Van Duren left the shelter of the shrubbery through which he had hitherto crept, and swiftly crossing the intervening open space, he sought the shelter of another fringe of shrubbery which grew between the gradually rising edge of the cliff and the carriage-drive that led up to the main entrance of the hotel. Keeping well within the shade of the evergreens, and climbing higher step by step, a few minutes more brought him close up to one corner of the house. It was now requisite to move with extreme caution. Suddenly he heard the sound of voices, and two or three loud goodnights. Some one was evidently leaving the hotel, and would pass close by him in a few moments. It would never do to be found there; so he plunged deeper into the shrubbery, and presently found himself close to one of the lighted windows that he had seen from the valley below. He hardly knew whether to advance or retire. The question was. Who were the occupants of the room? If strangers only, he would go quietly back by the way he had come; but if there was a chance of seeing Miriam--well, to see her again, he was prepared to risk much. He hated her, or fancied that he did, and yet there was still a strange fascination for him in the thought that he was close to her, that he was only separated from her by the thickness of a wall. Had he met her there alone in the shrubbery, he would have strangled her, but after that he would have kissed her and wept over her, and would probably have ended all by jumping over the cliff.
He crept close up to the window and peered through the Venetians. Fortunately for his purpose, they were not very closely drawn, and he could see into the room without difficulty. It was a large room, and was lighted by another window opposite to that through which Van Duren was now looking. This second window--a French one, by the way--was wide open, for the evening was somewhat sultry. Beyond it was a small balcony, and then the cliff, and, a hundred feet below, the white-lipped waves. Round a table in the middle of the room, four gentlemen were seated in earnest conversation. Three of them Van Duren had never seen before, but in the fourth he had no difficulty in recognizing his quondam lodger, Mr. Peter Byrne. It is true that the white locks, the hump, and the general air of feebleness and decrepitude had all disappeared; but Byrne's strongly-marked features could not be mistaken for those of any other man. But hardly had Van Duren time to notice all this, before his eyes were drawn to and concentrated on an object that was standing in the middle of the table. He shuddered from head to foot, and turned suddenly sick as he looked. He had recognized the object in a moment. It was the silver-clamped box which the divers had brought up from the bottom of the sea: it was the box for the sake of which Paul Stilling had been stabbed in his sleep.
Was the box full or empty? The lid was open, but Van Duren could not see inside. Anyhow, there was the box. What a host of terrible memories the sight of it called up in his mind! Trifling circumstances, all but forgotten, and that he had thrust persistently from his memory years ago, came back now with the vivid clearness of a photograph. Stilling's drunken laugh, the peculiar nervous twitching of his left eye, the broken nail on one of his fingers, the very patch on one of his boots, quizzically commented on by him as he was pulling on his slippers in front of the fire--how they all came back to Van Duren! As he stood there, it seemed to him but a few yesterdays, instead of twenty long years, since----
He drew out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead, and shut out the sight for a moment. When he looked again, Miriam was there. She was bending over the back of her father's chair and saying something in his ear. She had never looked sweeter, in Van Duren's eyes, than she looked to-night, with her soft flowing grenadine dress, and her bows of ribbon here and there, and a tea-rose in her hair.