“I sincerely hope he doesn’t suspect that I recognised him,” said Falconer. “But at any rate it is, to say the least, strange that he should be down here.”
“It is,” the girl agreed. “Probably you’ll learn something further about him soon.” Then she added: “Mother wants you to come with us this afternoon to Kynance Cove. She is asking Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton and two other ladies from the hotel; we are going to picnic there.”
He began to protest that he had work to do, but later, when he consulted Hamilton, the pair decided to finish early and join the ladies at half-past three. This they did, and while Hamilton, brisk and burly, drove his wife in his own grey car, Geoffrey, in a hired car, accompanied Sylvia and her mother, and the two other ladies with whom Mrs. Beverley was slightly acquainted.
The drive was a beautiful one through one of the wildest and remotest parts of Cornwall, over the fresh breezy hills, through the old-world village of Mullion, with its narrow, crooked streets, thence up the hill to Penhale, and over the high-up straight road which leads to Lizard Town. Before reaching the town, however, they turned to the right just after passing the Travellers’ Rest, and presently found themselves down in the Kynance Cove, one of the most celebrated and most romantic spots on that rugged granite coast.
They descended in the little bay beyond which rose from the sea the Gull Rock and Asparagus Island, with its cave known as the Devil’s Throat, and walked upon the silvery sand beneath the high cliffs of beautifully veined and coloured serpentine.
“Perfectly lovely!” declared Mrs. Beverley. “Just to think that they issue a storm-warning on such a glorious day!”
“Storms at sea often brew when the weather is brightest—just as they do in our own lives, Mrs. Beverley,” Geoffrey remarked.
“Ah, you’re always so horribly philosophical,” laughed the American woman. “I suppose it’s your profession that makes you so.” Together they had mounted to the top of a grass-grown cliff, and with their picnic basket, sat down to tea, which Mrs. Beverley poured out from Thermos flasks.
From where the party sat there spread a magnificent panorama of sea and rugged coast. Before them were the two granite islands around which thousands of gulls were swooping, while eastward lay the Venton Hill and the many rocks around the Lizard—the most southerly point in England—truly a wonderful scene, so weird, rugged, and remote.
Presently, after tea, Sylvia, looking very sweet in her summer gown, wandered away with the man she loved, leaving Hamilton with the four ladies to stroll and chatter. The pair took a rocky path which ascended higher up the hill, and as they went along, Mrs. Beverley shouted after them: