"What, with Bascomb here and Bobby Dean turning up in the morning?" I exclaimed. "Why, if I can't take care of my own skin with the help of a prize-fighter and a V.C.—" I stopped short, as a sudden difficulty occurred to me. "How about Bobby?" I added. "So far I haven't even mentioned your name to him. He is under the impression that the whole affair is a little private speculation of Dr. Manning's."
"You will have to tell him the truth," she said "It's too late to keep anything back." She glanced up at the clock above the fireplace; then, bending forward, she took my face between her hands, and looked long and tenderly into my eyes. "I must go, dear," she whispered; "you must take me back to Pen Mill and put me ashore. I daren't stay any longer, in case my uncle comes back unexpectedly."
Every instinct I possessed rose up in revolt, but, all the same, I saw that any further protest would be useless. For a moment I knelt there, holding her in my arms, and studying every curve of her beautiful face. Then, hungry with love, I crushed her still closer to my heart, and once again our lips met in a long, passionate kiss.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was in a far from enviable state of mind that I pulled back alone across the estuary after parting with Christine at Pen Mill.
By her own wish I had landed her at the extreme point of the jetty, where, with a whispered farewell, she had climbed ashore and disappeared silently into the mist, leaving me the prey of all sorts of conflicting emotions.
My chief feeling was one of anger with myself for not having prevented her from carrying out her reckless determination. How I could have done so it was difficult to see, but if there was any comfort to be drawn from that fact I certainly failed to discover it. Once more she was beyond the reach of my help, and, in spite of all her efforts to make light of the danger, I knew that the horrible misgivings which assailed my heart were only too well grounded.
Locking up the dinghy in its shed, I made my way back through the shrubbery and let myself into the house. A good fire was still burning away brightly on the hearth, and our teacups and plates were scattered about the table just as we had left them. I thought of ringing for Bascomb and telling him to clear away, but a sudden disinclination to see anyone checked my purpose. I walked across to the fireplace, and, thrusting an empty pipe between my teeth, dropped down again into my customary chair.
There I sat, thinking over Christine's story. She had told it so simply and naturally that even at the time I had felt a curious absence of surprise. Strange as the truth was, it had, too, only confirmed my own belief that somewhere far back in Mr. Richard Jannaway's chequered past lay the real source of all my present troubles. And yet, judged by any conceivable standard of the quiet English countryside about us, what an amazing tale it was! That bloody massacre in the sunlit streets of Rio, the long untiring search for vengeance, the death of my uncle at the very moment when an implacable fate was closing in about him—it all seemed more like the plot of some fantastic drama than a real sequence of actual events in which I was intimately and urgently concerned.