know what might turn up.’
Tommy kept a respectful silence. He was impressed by Little William. It seemed to remove the menace of Mr Brown farther away.
The path was now running along the side of the cliff, parallel to the sea. Suddenly Julius came to such an abrupt halt that Tommy cannoned into him.
‘What’s up?’ he inquired.
‘Look there. If that doesn’t beat the band!’
Tommy looked. Standing out and half obstructing the path was a huge boulder which certainly bore a fanciful resemblance to a ‘begging’ terrier.
‘Well,’ said Tommy, refusing to share Julius’s emotion, ‘it’s what we expected to see, isn’t it?’
Julius looked at him sadly and shook his head.
‘British phlegm! Sure we expected it – but it kind of rattles me, all the same, to see it sitting there just where we expected to find it!’
Tommy, whose calm was, perhaps, more assumed than natural, moved his feet impatiently.
‘Push on. What about the hole?’
They scanned the cliff-side narrowly. Tommy heard himself saying idiotically:
‘The gorse won’t be there after all these years.’
And Julius replied solemnly:
‘I guess you’re right.’
Tommy suddenly pointed with a shaking hand.
‘What about that crevice there?’
Julius replied in an awestricken voice:
‘That’s it – for sure.’
They looked at each other.
‘When I was in France,’ said Tommy reminiscently, ‘whenever my batman failed to call me, he always said that he had come over queer. I never believed it. But whether he felt it or not, there is such a sensation. I’ve got it now! Badly!’
He looked at the rock with a kind of agonized passion.
‘Damn it!’ he cried. ‘It’s impossible! Five years! Think of it! Birds’-nesting boys, picnic parties, thousands of people passing! It can’t be there! It’s a hundred to one against its being there! It’s against all reason!’
Indeed, he felt it to be impossible – more, perhaps, because he could not believe in his own success where so many others had failed. The thing was too easy, therefore it could not be. The hole would be empty.
Julius looked at him with a widening smile.
‘I guess you’re rattled now all right,’ he drawled with some enjoyment. ‘Well, here goes!’ He thrust his hand into the crevice, and made a slight grimace. ‘It’s a tight fit. Jane’s hand must be a few sizes smaller than mine. I don’t feel anything – no – say, what’s this? Gee whiz!’ And with a flourish he waved aloft a small discoloured packet. ‘It’s the goods all right. Sewn up in oilskin. Hold it while I get my penknife.’
The unbelievable had happened. Tommy held the precious packet tenderly between his hands. They had succeeded!
‘It’s queer,’ he murmured idly, ‘you’d think the stitches would have rotted. They look just as good as new.’
They cut them carefully and ripped away the oilskin. Inside was a small folded sheet of paper. With trembling fingers they unfolded it. The sheet was blank! They stared at each other, puzzled.
‘A dummy!’ hazarded Julius. ‘Was Danvers just a decoy?’
Tommy shook his head. That solution did not satisfy him. Suddenly his face cleared.
‘I’ve got it! Sympathetic ink!’
‘You think so?’
‘Worth trying anyhow. Heat usually does the trick. Get some sticks. We’ll make a fire.’
In a few minutes the little fire of twigs and leaves was blazing merrily. Tommy held the sheet of paper near the glow. The paper curled a little with the heat. Nothing more.
Suddenly Julius grasped his arm, and pointed to where characters were appearing in a faint brown colour.
‘Gee whiz! You’ve got it! Say, that idea of yours was great. It never occurred to me.’
Tommy held the paper in position some minutes longer until he judged the heat had done its work. Then he withdrew it. A moment later he uttered a cry.
Across the sheet in neat brown printing ran the words:
WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF MR BROWN.
For a moment or two they stood staring at each other stupidly, dazed with the shock. Somehow, inexplicably, Mr Brown had forestalled them. Tommy accepted defeat quietly. Not so Julius.
‘How in tarnation did he get ahead of us? That’s what beats me!’ he ended up.
Tommy shook his head, and said dully:
‘It accounts for the stitches being new. We might have guessed …’
‘Never mind the darned stitches. How did he get ahead of us? We hustled all we knew. It’s downright impossible for anyone to get here quicker than we did. And, anyway, how did he know? Do you reckon there was a dictaphone in Jane’s room? I guess there must have been.’
But Tommy’s common sense pointed out objections.
‘No one could have known beforehand that she was going to be in that house – much less that particular room.’
‘That’s so,’ admitted Julius. ‘Then one of the nurses was a crook and listened at the door. How’s that?’
‘I don’t see that it matters anyway,’ said Tommy wearily. ‘He may have found out some months ago, and removed the papers, then – No, by Jove, that won’t wash! They’d have been published at once.’
‘Sure thing they would! No, someone’s got ahead of us today by an hour or so. But how they did it gets my goat.’
‘I wish that chap Peel Edgerton had been with us,’ said Tommy thoughtfully.
‘Why?’ Julius stared. ‘The mischief was done when we came.’
‘Yes –’ Tommy hesitated. He could not explain his own feeling – the illogical idea that the K.C.’s presence would somehow have averted the catastrophe. He reverted to his former point of view.
