When we stepped ashore at Invermalluch Hilderman looked back across the water.
“If I’d waited for Fuller,” he laughed, “I should have been stuck there yet. He’s let the water go off the boil or something.”
We went up to the house and had tea on the verandah, for the General had taken Myra up Loch Hourn in the motor-boat. After tea we got to business.
“Now that I’ve had a very refreshing cup of tea,” the American remarked, “I feel rather like the mouse who said ‘Now bring out your cat’ when he had consumed half a teaspoonful of beer! Now show me the river.”
“I don’t want to sound at all panicky,” I said, “but I think I ought to warn you that our experiences at the particular spot we are going to have—well, shall we say they have provided a striking contrast from the routine of our daily life?”
“I’m not at all afraid of the river, Mr. Ewart,” he replied lightly. “I should be the last person to doubt the statements of yourself and Miss McLeod and the General, but I am inclined to think the river has no active part in the proceedings.”
“You hold the view that it was the merest coincidence that Miss McLeod and the General both had terrible and strange experiences at the same spot?” asked Dennis.
“It seems to be the only sensible view to hold,” Hilderman declared emphatically. “I must say I think Miss McLeod’s blindness might have happened in her own room or anywhere else, and the General’s strange experience seems to me to be the delusion of overwrought nerves. I confess there is only one thing I don’t understand, and that is the disappearance of the dog. That’s got me beaten, unless it was that crofter.”
“We intend to go to the Saddle to-morrow and make a few investigations. I was going by myself,” I added cautiously, “but I think I can persuade Burnham to stay and go with me.”