The Head Girl at the Gables

by Angela Brazil

  CHAPTER XX

  Smugglers' Cove

  Morland's leave ended on Sunday night, and by Monday morning both he andhis superior officer were back in camp. Claudia came to school in anunusually quiet and depressed frame of mind.

  "Yes, I miss Morland," she acknowledged to Lorraine; "but it isn'taltogether that. I'm worried about him. Perhaps it's silly of me, but Ican't help it. I know I can't expect him to keep a boy always, yet onefeels that growing up ought to be growing into something better--notworse. Honestly, between ourselves, I don't think Madame Bertier has agood influence over him. He's always fearfully taken with her,absolutely infatuated. She fascinates him just as she does Vivien andDorothy and some of the girls at school, and she encourages him inthings he'd much better let alone. She was up at Windy Howe on Sunday,and took Morland off for a long walk, although he'd promised to stay athome that last afternoon. They went along the cliffs towards TangyPoint. Don't think I'm jealous, but I really feel angry withher--carrying him away from his family when he'd only a few hours leftof his leave!"

  "I hope he didn't show her our cave?" asked Lorraine quickly.

  "I hope not, but I think it's extremely probable. Oh, yes! I know hepromised to keep the secret, but he's beginning to say that our secretsare childish, and not worth keeping. I've several times heard Madameasking him if he knew of any caves along the coast. If she askedpersistently enough he'd be sure to tell her. I know Morland!"

  "Why is she so keen on caves?"

  Claudia shrugged her shoulders.

  "There are a great many 'whys' about Madame that I can't answer. She'sthe sort of woman you read about in a novel. She's bewitched most peopleat Porthkeverne. I own she's very nice and pleasant, and when I'm withher I even fall under the spell a little, and almost like her, but allthe time at the bottom of my heart I don't trust her at all."

  Whatever Claudia's private opinion might be of Madame Bertier, thatpretty Russian lady was very popular in the artistic and literarycircles of the town. She was always ready to pose as model, or to playher violin at concerts or At Homes. She was capital company, had a finesense of humour, and could keep a whole room full of people amused withher lively chatter. In addition to her engagement at The Gables she hadnow a number of private pupils in Porthkeverne, and had establishedquite a connection for lessons in French, Russian, and music. On thesubject of her husband she was guarded, but it was generally understoodthat he was a prisoner in Germany, and that she sent him parcels.Lorraine, with a remembrance of that brief sentence she had overheard atBurlington House, often wondered if that were the case.

  Madame's Academy portrait had been considered quite one of the picturesof the year: it had been reproduced in art journals and illustratedpapers, and in the opinion of the critics was almost Mr. Castleton'sbest piece of work. To Lorraine's great joy, "Kilmeny" also came in fora share of notice in the newspaper reviews, and one day a letter arrivedat the studio by the harbour, containing a special invitation for thepicture to be exhibited at an important provincial art gallery in theautumn. Such invitations are the swallows of an artist's summer ofsuccess, and Margaret Lindsay's eyes shone, as she showed Lorraine theofficial document with the city arms heading the paper.

  "You've been my mascot, you see!" she said brightly. "I've tried to getinto that particular exhibition time after time, and always had mypictures rejected. And now, just to think that I'm specially invited,and a place of honour kept for my 'Kilmeny'! I feel an inch taller! Imust paint you in the sunset again, Lorraine!"

  Lorraine, curled up on the window-seat, turning over art magazines,shook her head.

  "Don't repeat yourself!" she advised. "Why not paint the dawn instead?It's just as beautiful as sunset--more so, I think, and would give you adifferent scheme of colour, all opal and pearly pink, instead of goldenand brown. Can't you choose some other fairy-tale heroine?"

  "Yes--the Dawn Princess! I can see her in imagination, standing at theedge of the waves, with a rosy sky behind her, and trails of sea-weedunder her bare feet. I believe it would be a companion picture to'Kilmeny'! If I can paint it in time, I'll see if the Art Gallery willconsent to exhibit the pair. I'm actually getting ambitious. Will youstand as model again?"

  "With all the pleasure in life, any time and anywhere you want me! I'myours to command!"

  A good and adequate picture of the dawn was not so easy to paint as asunset. They were on the west coast, and, in order to get the effect ofthe sun rising over the sea, it was necessary to be on some promontorywhere they could look eastwards over a stretch of water. The onlyheadland which answered the required points of the compass was Giant'sTor Point, which jutted out in a curve from the mainland, with the wholeof Pendragon Bay between it and the opposite point of the coast. Thesandy beach under its shelter had been named "Smugglers' Cove". Itwas several miles away from Porthkeverne, so unless they could walkthere by moonlight, it would be quite impossible to reach it in time towitness from the beach the spectacle of dawn. A moonlight scramble overcliffs and rocks might be highly romantic, but not altogether a safeproceeding, and Margaret Lindsay had a better suggestion to offer.

  "We'll take my little bathing-tent, and pitch it on the shore in somesheltered place, and spend the night there. There will be just room forus both to cram in, and with a rug each we should keep quite warm. Thenwe shall be all ready and prepared for the dawn the moment it comes."

  The weather was so warm that there were no objections to camping-out,and Mrs. Forrester quite readily gave permission for the expedition.

  "You're such a _sensible_ person, Muvvie dear!" gasped Lorraineecstatically. "Some mothers would have howled at such a plan. I'm sureAunt Carrie wouldn't have let Vivien go. You always seem to see thingsjust from the same point of view as we do ourselves."

  "I know you'll be safe with Margaret Lindsay, or I wouldn't let you stirfive yards from my apron strings. I could be a dragon of a mother if theoccasion required!" laughed Mrs. Forrester. "So far, happily, you'venever wanted to do anything especially outrageous. I can see no harm inyour camping-out on the beach just for one night. I should be a veryunreasonable person if I objected."

  "But then you're Muvvie and nobody else, you see!" said Lorraine,dropping a kiss on the dear brown hair that was just turning grey.

  So it came to pass that on the very Tuesday evening after Morland hadreturned to camp, Margaret Lindsay and Lorraine shouldered bathing-tent,rugs, and picnic-basket, and trudged out to Giant's Tor Point. Theyarrived there about sunset, and found a quiet, sheltered spot among therocks, well above high-water mark, where they pitched their tent. Therewas not a soul in sight: they seemed to have the whole of the headlandand the bay entirely to themselves. It was a calm, warm evening, and thewaves lapped gently upon the beach. The sand in the spot they had chosenwas dry, so they piled up heaps of it for pillows, and laid down theirrugs; then, having completed these preparations, opened their basketsand had a picnic supper. The sunset had faded by that time, and a fullmoon was shining over the bay, glinting on the waves and lighting up theoutlines of the crags on the headland. The silence was broken only bythe gentle purring of the waves on the pebbles, or the call of somenight-bird. The calm stillness was beautiful beyond description: it waslike a glimpse into another world where all petty struggles and troubleshad faded away. It needed an effort to leave the beautiful moonlight andgo to bed inside the tent, but they tore themselves away from it atlast, and rolled themselves up in their rugs. It was a long time beforeeither of them slept; the unusual circumstances, their cramped position,and the swish-swash-grind of the waves made them keenly on the alert.Though Lorraine would not have confessed it for worlds, she found thesituation a trifle eerie. She thought she heard noises in the distance,and recalled tales of smugglers and wreckers and ghost-haunted coves.She was glad to have Margaret close beside her. There was comfort in thesense of contact with something human. Not till after midnight did shefall into a troubled sleep.

  When she awoke, the moon had passed across the sky, and the firs
t hintof dawn was in the air. Margaret had flung back her rug, and wasstepping out of the tent. Lorraine followed her, shivering a little, forthe morning air was chilly. Everything was wreathed in pearly shadows,and the headland loomed like a grey mass of mist, with the sea for asilver lake below. Each moment the light seemed to grow stronger, andwhat at first had appeared mere clumps of darkness resolved themselvesinto mussel-covered rocks or banks of sea-weed. At the far side of thebay, behind the heather-clad hill, the sky was changing from pearl torose. Margaret, whose paints were ready, began to set up her easel tosketch the evanescent effect without delay. But just as she was puttingin the pegs, Lorraine nudged her and pointed. At the end of the cove,where the bay merged into the open sea, there had suddenly arisen astrange object. They both looked at it, and both at the same momentrealized what it was--neither more or less than the conning tower of aU-boat!

  Margaret hastily pulled down her easel, and drew Lorraine behind theshelter of some rocks. She judged that if a U-boat were so near to thecoast, then somebody in collusion with the enemy must be about on theshore. Nor was she mistaken. They had hardly concealed themselves whenvoices were heard quite a short distance away, and the grating sound ofa boat being pushed along the shingle. In the gathering brightness ofthe dawn they could see, not a hundred yards off, the entrance to a cavefrom which two men were taking some barrels. They rolled them down thebeach, and with apparent difficulty hoisted them into a small boat. Sointent were they on their occupation that they never glanced in thedirection of the rock where Margaret and Lorraine were concealed. Thebathing-tent, fortunately, was round a corner, and out of sight. Nodoubt they imagined that in that early hour of the morning they had thecove to themselves. Two anxious pairs of eyes, however, were watchingthem narrowly, and making a mental register of their actions. As the menwent back to fetch more barrels, they were met by a third companion whoissued from the cave; he stood for a moment speaking to them, andlooking out over the water towards the conning tower of the U-boat. Thefirst rays of the rising sun fell full on his face.

  As she watched him standing there in the sunlight, with the backgroundof the dark cave behind him, some detached links in Lorraine's memorysuddenly welded themselves together, and formed a continuous chain. In aflash she recollected where she had seen him before--he was the man whohad tried to take the photo of the hockey field and of the golf links inthe autumn, and not only that, but she could almost be sure that he wasidentical with the stranger who had met Madame Bertier on the beach, andthe foreigner who had admired her picture in the Academy. The suddendiscovery almost stunned her. She realized all it might mean. It wasevident enough what the men were doing. They had a secret store ofbarrels of oil inside the cave, and were taking them out to supply theU-boat. They were in a hurry, and the business did not last long. Theircargo was soon complete, the boat pushed off and was making its wayalong the side of the cove to the place where the conning tower stillshowed like a blot on the water.

  As soon as it seemed safe to move from their hiding-place, Margaret andLorraine dodged round the rocks, and abandoning tent, easel, andpainting accessories climbed up the cliff-side and tramped home acrossthe moor to Porthkeverne with all possible speed. They were sure thatwhat they had witnessed ought to be reported at once, so they wentstraight to the police station and told their amazing story. Theconstable listened attentively, jotting down points in his notebook,asked various questions and took their names and addresses. He wasguarded in his communications, but he thanked them for coming.

  "I may have to call on you for more help" he remarked thoughtfully, thenturning to Lorraine: "I suppose you're at home to-day if I chance towant you?"

  "You'll find me at school at The Gables until four o'clock."

  He nodded, and made another entry in his notebook, then, dismissingthem courteously, rang up his chief on the telephone.

  Lorraine went home to breakfast, feeling as if she had suddenly steppedinto the pages of a detective story. That some treachery was takingplace at Porthkeverne was beyond question: loyal subjects of King Georgedo not supply U-boats with casks of oil, and the man whom she had seenwas palpably no British subject, but a foreigner. She wondered what thenext step in the course of events would be, and what help she would beable to render. The answer to her surmisings came from a direction shehad not anticipated. She had only been at school about an hour, and wasat work on a piece of unseen Latin translation, when a message wasbrought to her summoning her to the study. She found her Uncle Bartonthere, talking to Miss Janet.

  "Lorraine," he said briefly, "Miss Kingsley has excused your lessonsto-day. Get your hat and coat and come with me, for I want to take youby train. We've just time to catch the 10.40 if we're quick."

  Much excited and puzzled, Lorraine flew to the cloak-room, and donnedher outdoor shoes and hat with lightning speed. What was going to happennext in this amazing chain of events? On the way to the station, UncleBarton explained.

  "The police have long been trying to catch a notorious spy, and fromthe description you gave this morning, they think they are on the righttrack of the man they want. A certain foreigner at St. Cyr is underobservation, but they cannot arrest him without a witness to hisidentity. If you can certify that to the best of your knowledge he isthe man whom you saw this morning supplying casks of oil to a U-boat,then the police can act. Should you know him again if you saw him?"

  "I'd remember him anywhere now!" declared Lorraine.

  It was a comparatively short journey to St. Cyr, and on arrival therethey went straight to the police station. They were shown by a constableinto a private office, where they were shortly joined by a detective. Hequestioned Lorraine carefully as to the various occasions on which shehad seen the suspected foreigner.

  "A man answering exactly to that description has been staying at aboarding-house in Spring Terrace," he commented. "We happen to know thathe was out all last night, and returned on a motor bicycle at eighto'clock this morning. These facts would fit in with the supposition thathe was at Giant's Tor Point at dawn. What we want you to do is to watchthe house, and identify him if he comes out. Now of course youunderstand that it wouldn't do for a young lady and a detective to siton the doorstep waiting for him. At the first sight of us he'd escape bythe back way. We want to catch him off his guard. My idea is this. Haveyou any notion of gardening?"

  "A little," said Lorraine, surprised.

  "You could rake about, at any rate, and pull up a few weeds? Well,there's a small public park right in front of the house in SpringTerrace. If you don't mind putting on a land worker's costume that I'veborrowed for you, we'll employ you for the day on a job of gardening inthe park. You can keep one eye on the weeds, and the other on the frontdoor of 27 Spring Terrace. I shall be near you, bedding out fuchsias.You agree to take on the job? Then may I ask you to step into this otherroom and put on your land costume? There's no time to be lost. We don'twant to miss the fellow. I've a man selling newspapers and watching thehouse, but he's no use as a witness."

  This was indeed an excitement. Lorraine felt thrills as she hurried intothe corduroys, leggings, and smock that had been placed ready for her.They were an indifferent fit, but in the circumstances that did notmatter. The hat she thought decidedly becoming. On her return to theoffice she found that Detective Scott had also accomplished a quickchange. He was now arrayed in a shabby suit of clothes, and carried aparcel of bedding-out plants.

  He smiled satisfaction at her get-up, and handed her a rake and abasket.

  "Good luck to you!" said Uncle Barton. "I shall be somewhere about inthe park, not far from you; but I'd better not show up too much. Thesefellows soon get their suspicions aroused if they see people hanginground."

  It was certainly a new experience for Lorraine to walk through thestreets of St. Cyr in smock and corduroys, but the townspeople were sowell used to land workers that nobody took any particular notice of her.The park was close at hand, and here the detective, setting down hisparcel of fuchsias, showed her a patch of border n
ext to the railings,and instructed her to weed and rake it.

  "No. 27 is the house with the green blinds and the plant in the window,"he whispered. "I've seen Jones--the man who's selling newspapers--and hesays nobody has come out from there yet answering to the description ofthe fellow we want."

  With that he left her, and, turning his back, began operations on around bed already fairly full of lobelias and geraniums. Lorraine, withall her attention concentrated on the door of No. 27, workedabstractedly. She thought afterwards that, if any of the ratepayers ofSt. Cyr had taken the trouble to watch her gardening operations, theywould have decided that girls on the land were certainly not worth theirsalt. She raked, and weeded, and picked up a few dead twigs, and scrapedsome moss off the path with a trowel, turning her head every othermoment to peep through the railings. Once the door of No. 27 opened, andshe held her breath, but it was only a lady who came out with a littlechild. Was this mysterious foreigner really in the house? He might haveescaped by a back way, or have gone off in some disguise, in which caseall her waiting would be in vain. Hour after hour passed by. The nightat the cove and the agitation of the early morning had made her verytired, but she stuck grimly to her job. She was hungry, too, for it wasnearly three o'clock, and she had eaten nothing since breakfast. Thedetective, who had been pottering about the flower-beds, saunteredcarelessly up to her as if to direct her work.

  "Can you hold out any longer?" he asked under his breath.

  "I'll try!" she answered pluckily.

  "I'll send a boy to buy you some buns. I expect, after a night out, thefellow's sleeping. There's no knowing what time he may choose to take awalk. The only thing is to stick it as long as you can."

  The buns arrived in due course, delivered in a paper bag by a small boy.Lorraine felt a little better after eating them, but her task of waitingand watching had grown irksome in the extreme. She hated that patch ofground behind the railings. She felt that she would remember the look ofthe brown soil for the rest of her life. The market-hall clock chimedthe quarters. The distance between the chimes seemed interminable. Shehad never realised that fifteen minutes could be so long. Four o'clockstruck, then the time dragged on till half-past, then a quarter to five.

  "I believe I'll faint or do something silly if I stay here much longer!"thought Lorraine. "I wish my legs wouldn't shake in such an idioticmanner!"

  Five o'clock sounded from the tower of the market hall. She stretchedher weary back, and leaned on her rake. Her eyes were fixed on the dooropposite. It was opening. Someone was standing in the hall, andapparently speaking. He slammed the door and came down the path towardsthe gate. There was no mistaking the dark, clean-shaven face; she knewits owner again instantly. At the gate he paused and lighted acigarette, then walked rapidly away in the direction of the railwaystation.

  The detective turned from his flower-beds, humming a tune with apparentindifference.

  "Can you identify him?" he whispered.

  "Certainly I can. Without a doubt it's the man I saw this morning."

  "We'll just catch him at the corner of the park, then. I've a couple ofmen waiting," chuckled the detective, taking a short cut over theflower-beds, regardless of tender seedlings.

  Lorraine was not near enough to witness the actual arrest. What happenednext was that Mr. Barton Forrester came and took her back to the policestation, where she formally identified the prisoner. Then she thankfullychanged into her own clothes, and went with Uncle Barton into the townto get some tea.

  Little Uncle Barton was as excited and pleased as a boy at the result ofthe adventure. His face beamed with satisfaction as he ordered cakes atthe cafe.

  "We've done a good day's work, Lorraine," he confided, lowering hisvoice lest bystanders should overhear. "That fellow has been undersuspicion, but they couldn't catch him tripping. Dodson, the detective,believes he'll turn out a notorious spy, in which case they'll haveplenty of witnesses against him on other charges, without needing tobring you into the matter again. They'll deal with him under martiallaw. There are far too many of these spies about the country--half ofthe foreigners who are here ought to be interned! You looked A1 in thatrig-out" (his eyes twinkled). "Will you stick to your job aslady-gardener in the park?"

  "Not for worlds!" exclaimed Lorraine eloquently, helping herself to asecond cup of tea.