“Go and meet her in Cape Town, Hugh. I shall regard your confession as sacred. You saved the girl from further dishonour, and you saved to me the fruits of my labours. It was murder, I admit. But now that I know the dead man’s name, I am aware that he was guilty of the same crime—the robbery and murder of a wealthy old lady near Marseilles two years ago—a woman to whom he had forced Gabrielle to act as maid.”
“And you will say nothing—not a word will pass your lips?” asked Hugh Carew eagerly.
“Not a word—I swear! The man has met with his just deserts.”
“Thank you, Geoffrey,” was the other’s reply, and both left the dull, half-dark room without further word.
CHAPTER IV
THE DEVIL’S OVEN
The calm summer morning broke gloriously over the entrance to the English Channel between Land’s End and the Lizard. The sea was blue, with only a faint ripple.
Mrs. Beverley had been induced by Geoffrey to leave Upper Brook Street to spend a few weeks in Cornwall, taking Sylvia with her.
Indeed, it was Sylvia who pressed her mother to go to Cornwall because Geoffrey was compelled to go down to the Marconi wireless station at Poldhu, near Mullion, where some alterations were being carried out.
The widow and her daughter had, three days before, taken up their quarters at the Poldhu Hotel, which is situated high upon the cliff within a stone’s throw of the high-power wireless station, which, at stated times by day and by night, transmits messages to ships across the Atlantic. Geoffrey had also taken up his quarters there, and from the hotel windows a wide and beautiful view could be obtained of the rugged Cornish coast, the picturesque Poldhu Cove and the wild Halzaphron Cliff standing out to sea, a rough granite headland.