That evening we were all three sitting in the library (the same old-world room into which I had first been shown), when a servant entered and gave a message to Mr. Rendall. He rose and went out, leaving his daughter and myself each apparently immersed in a book. She may genuinely have been, but I was making the covers of mine a screen for inward debate. Had I made a mere fool of myself and should I make a clean breast of everything to my hosts? Or should I wait a little longer before deciding? I went on thinking after the laird had left the room, and Miss Jean still kept her eyes immovably on her page. I frankly confess I have never cut less ice with any woman⁠—especially one who decidedly attracted me.

In a few minutes her father returned and said to her:

“John Howiseon has cried off tonight. I must go myself.”

She started up with a word of expostulation, but he merely smiled in his grim way, nodded at her (not at me, I noticed) and was gone. With a little sigh she sat down again and plunged into her book, but my curiosity had been roused and in a moment I enquired,

“Is your father going out for long?”

Her concern seemed to have broken down her reticence.

“All night,” she said. “I wish he wouldn’t!”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“The coast patrol,” said she.

“The coast patrol!” I exclaimed. “What’s that?”

She seemed to look at me for an instant a little doubtfully before she answered,

“The Admiralty have asked all the Justices of Peace to have the coast patrolled.”

“By whom?”

“Anybody they can get. We have the whole island mapped out into beats and the different; farmers take it night about.”

For the moment I only half believed her. Such an amateur way of keeping watch and ward in such a vital area seemed hardly credible, but I learned afterwards that in those early days of the war that was one of the things which actually happened. Another fact also made me doubtful. On the night I landed I had met no watchers.

“Who watches the shore up at the north end⁠—near the Scollays’ farm?” I asked.

“Oh, Dr. Rendall and Mr. O’Brien look after that beat,” said she.

In a flash my belief in my own adventure had begun to return. Either that couple neglected their duty⁠—or I had met one of the watchers!

“Do the doctor and Mr. O’Brien ever go out themselves⁠—like your father tonight?” I asked.

“Mr. O’Brien goes out pretty often, I believe.”

I thought for a moment longer and then I jumped up.

“This seems the very job for an able-bodied young man,” I said with a laugh. “I’m going out to join the watchers!”

“You!” she exclaimed, springing up too.

I looked her straight in the eye.

“Why not me?” I enquired.

She said nothing for an instant, and then she remarked in quite a matter of fact voice,

“Very well; if you are going, I’ll come with you.”

I could not resist parodying her.

“You!” I exclaimed.

But I got no smile in response.

“I’ll be ready in five minutes,” she said as she left the room.

“Now what the devil does this mean?” I said to myself.

Five minutes of course meant quarter of an hour, and then we sallied forth into the night, she in a long tweed coat and I in my inevitable oilskin.

“Which way do you want to go?” she asked.

“Suppose we work our way towards the north end,” I suggested.

She said nothing more and we made our way by a track to the shore and then turned toward the left. I had been filling my pipe and when we got to the last stone wall, I stopped, bent under its shelter and struck a match. My face was towards her and in the fraction of a second before the first match blew out I caught a glimpse of something just visible in the mouth of one of the big pockets of her tweed coat. It was the butt end of a pistol.

I struck three more matches before I got my pipe alight and I contrived to face her each time, but she had turned and kept her other side towards me. When we resumed our walk I noticed that she consistently kept two or three yards away from me.

“Just shooting distance!” I said to myself.

“By the way, what are we supposed to be looking for?” I enquired presently.

“Chiefly periscopes, I think,” said she.

I stopped short and gazed over the inky sea.

“Do they light them up for us?” I asked.

She laughed despite herself.

“That is what I’ve been wondering myself,” said she.

This was her only sympathetic relapse, and to tell the truth I made no further remarks worthy of being smiled at. That pistol kept me thinking. That she had come out to watch me, and if necessary shoot me, seemed a pretty obvious deduction, and much as I admired her nerve, it made humorous conversation a trifle difficult.

On we walked, on and on for what seemed an interminable distance. It was quite moonless and only a few stars twinkled here and there through a veil of light clouds that had drifted up with the sunset. The grass underfoot was black, the sea was nearly as dark, and the inland country invisible. Once I remarked:

“It’s a curious thing that we haven’t met any of our fellow watchers.”

“The beats are very long,” she said, “and I’m afraid all the watchers don’t keep at their posts all the time.”

“What; they take a nap now and then?”

She seemed as though she were going to agree, and then to change her mind.

“Oh, we shall meet someone very soon. I think father is taking this beat.”

But we met no one, and as we pursued our lonely way I began to think that here was quite a possible reason for my not having come upon one of these coast patrols two nights ago. Still, it was only a possible reason; the other alternative remained.

And then, I know not how it was, but I began gradually to get a curious impression that something was in the air, something was going to happen. It is easy to say I only imagine now in the retrospect that I had this feeling. But I noted the sensation clearly and positively at the time. I strained my eyes, I looked this way and that, so strong did the feeling become. Once I thought for a moment I heard soft footsteps somewhere on the inland side and I stopped short then and listened, but when I stopped I heard nothing.

It can only have been a few minutes after this that the figure at my side (which had been so silent that I had almost forgotten it was a girl, and a pretty girl too) stopped suddenly, and I stood still beside her.

“Do you hear anything?” she asked, and there seemed to be a little catch in her breath.

I listened and shook my head. I could see that she was gazing intently down at the beach.

“Do you see anything?” I asked in a voice instinctively hushed.

“No,” she answered in the same low tone, “but I thought I heard something.”

Again I strained my ears, and this time I distinctly did hear something; it might have been a movement among the rocks below, or on the bank ahead of us. She said nothing more but she seemed to be peering down into the gloom that veiled the beach.

“I’ll go down and see what it is,” I said.

For an instant I thought she was going to demur, but she said nothing, and with a bold air I stepped off the turf and began to make my way down, first through loose boulders and then along a ledge below. I confess frankly that I felt a trifle less bold than I looked, especially when I discovered the hazardous nature of the going. I remember that the sky began to seem lighter by contrast, but that the rocks were sheer chaotic darkness.

I must have been feeling my way along for some minutes, with a growing sense of the futility of the performance, when I first heard the sharp tinkle of a loose stone on rock. I turned towards the sound and heard it again. Either three or four times I had heard it distinctly when I found myself close to the grass again, only at this place there was a steep little cliff, higher than my head, between it and me, instead of a slope of boulders, so that anyone on the bank above would be looking straight down on to me. All this I can swear to.

And then when my shoulder was rubbing this low cliff face, I thought⁠—indeed I am sure⁠—I heard something move above, and certainly there was a sharp grating sound on the rock at my back; within an inch of me, it seemed. I looked round quickly just in time to catch a glimpse of something thin and curved and sinister passing upwards, against the night sky. I did not see it descend again, but the next moment came the sharp grating, close to my head this time, and once more the long curved menace passed up, faintly visible against the sky.

I did not wait for it to descend again. That somebody was striking at me from above and that I had better get out of the way seemed so evident that I spent no further time in watching the operation. I started from the cliff, my foot struck a patch of seaweed, and with a half smothered “Damn!” I did the next few yards sliding seawards on my side. A peculiarly hard ledge stopped my career and for a moment I lay there wondering what bones were broken. By the time I had found there were none, and scrambled to my feet, the sky line above the bank was clear. Whoever had struck at me was gone and there was not even the slightest sound, save the gurgling of the sea below. And then I gingerly picked my way back.

I drew near the turf bank at the top and now again I stopped. Low voices reached my ear distinctly and presently I spied two vague forms standing close together. Before I moved again I had transferred something from my hip pocket to my oilskin jacket and I kept my hand there too, closed upon it and ready. Then I advanced.

“Is that you, Mr. Merton?” said a voice I knew.

“It is, Mr. Rendall,” I answered drily.

“Did you see anybody?”

“No,” I answered truthfully.

“We thought we heard a cry,” said Miss Jean.

“I may have startled a sea gull,” I suggested; and then I asked with a sharpness in my voice I could not quite control, “Where did Mr. Rendall spring from?”

“I told you I thought we should meet him,” she answered, with a cool note in her voice that countered mine.

“What a curious chance that we should all meet here!” I exclaimed.

“It is precisely what I expected,” said she.

“Did you think then it was Mr. Rendall down among the rocks?” I enquired.

“No,” she said, “and it wasn’t.”

“Oh,” I replied in a tone which (if I achieved my intention) might have meant anything⁠—or nothing.

Her father had been standing perfectly silent during this bout, a towering figure muffled in a heavy ulster and scarf, with the rim of his hat turned down over his face. Now he spoke in his dry caustic way,

“Have you had enough exercise, Mr. Merton?”

“Quite, thank you.”

“Then we can all go back together.”

He turned and his daughter took his arm. I walked behind them⁠—it seemed on the whole safer, and I kept my hand in my pocket all the while.

I had seen no one, it is true; I had heard no sound that could be sworn to as made by a human being, the thing I saw so dimly might possibly not have been a lethal weapon (and if it was a weapon, what in Heaven’s name could it be? I wondered); it might conceivably have been a large bird some distance off, just as by a reverse illusion men are said to have fired at bumble bees when grouse driving. Also, it was within the bounds of possibility that the tinkling stones might not have been thrown down by someone above in order to draw me under that face. Everything had been so vague that all these alternatives were conceivable. But my own mind was quite and finally determined now that my adventure with the stranger on the shore had been no figment of my fancy, and I felt sure moreover that they had made up their minds about me and decided to act. How and why they had come to such a definite conclusion despite all my efforts to mislead them, beat me at first completely. And then I stopped short and almost shouted “Idiot!”

I had addressed Miss Rendall at her own door in a German accent. Then I had abruptly dropped it and through all my deliberate mystifications one fact had been clear⁠—that I spoke in the accents of an ordinary more or less educated Englishman. The Rendalls clearly had the material for coming to a conclusion, and now in their company I had all but ended my days on earth.

Yet somehow or other now that I saw all this so clearly, I found myself singularly reluctant to accept the logical conclusion that this gentleman of good lineage and standing and this attractive high-spirited girl were actually traitors of the basest sort, and murderous traitors too.

“Hang it, I may be wrong after all!” I said to myself. “I know I’m young: I am told I’m rash; I have made a fool of myself periodically as long as I’ve known myself, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt a little longer.”

At the door Mr. Rendall left us to resume his conscientious patrol. I said a brief and cool good night to Jean, went up to my room and tumbled straight into bed.

“In the morning I’ll think things over,” I decided.