They raced off to carry out his instructions, while Michael pulled up the rope and flung it on the terrace.
“That cuts off his escape in this direction,” he said to himself. “Now we can dig him out at leisure.”
Without hurrying, he made his way down to the water.
“There used to be a raft of sorts here,” he explained. “If we can rout it out, we’ll be able to ferry across to the cave-mouth without much bother. I doubt if he’ll show fight once we lay our hands on him; for he hasn’t an earthly chance of getting away.”
He poked about among the sedge on the rim of the lakelet and at last discovered the decrepit raft.
“This thing’ll just bear two of us. Do we dig the beggar out or starve him out? Dig him out, eh? Well, I want someone to go with me. Here, you, Frankie”—he turned to the Prehistoric Man—“you’d better come along. If it comes to a ducking, you’ve got fewer clothes to spoil than the rest of us.”
Nothing loath, the Prehistoric Man scrambled aboard the raft, which sank ominously under the extra weight.
“I can’t find anything to pole with,” grumbled Michael. “Paddle with your flippers, Frankie. It’s the only thing to do. Get busy with it.”
Under this primitive method of propulsion, the progress of the raft was slow; but at last they succeeded in bringing it under the cliff-face, after which they were able to work it along by hand. Gradually they manœuvred it into position in front of the cave-mouth, which stood only a yard or so above water-level. Michael leaned forward to the entrance.
“You may as well come out quietly,” he warned the inmate. “It’s no good trying to put up a fight. You haven’t a dog’s chance.”
There was no reply of any sort.
“Hold the damned raft steady, Frankie! You nearly had me overboard,” expostulated Michael. “I’m going to light a match. The cave’s as black as the pit, and I can see nothing.”
He pulled a silver match-box from his trousers pocket.
“Lucky I hadn’t this in my coat; for you don’t look as if you had a pocket of any sort on you, Frankie.”
The first match, damped by the moisture on his hands, sputtered and died out.
“Hurry up, Guvnor,” shouted Mephistopheles, cheerfully, from the bank. “Don’t keep us up all night with your firework display. It’s getting a bit chilly, paddling about amongst this sedge. Not at all the temperature I’m accustomed to at home.”
Michael felt for another match and lighted it successfully. Standing up on the raft, he held the light above his head and peered into the cavity in the rock. The Prehistoric Man heard him exclaim in amazement.
“Damnation, Frankie! He’s not here! It’s hardly a cave at all.”
He put his hands on the cave floor.
“Hold tight with the raft. I’m going in to make sure.”
He scrambled up into the hollow; but almost immediately his face appeared again in the moonlight.
“Nothing here. The hole’s barely big enough to take me in.”
“Then where’s he gone?” demanded the Prehistoric Man, who was a creature of few words.
“I dunno! Must have given us the slip somehow. If he isn’t here, he must be somewhere else. No getting round that.”
He shouted the news to the watchers on the banks; and a confused sound of argument rose from amongst the sedge.
“Not much use hanging round the old home, Frankie. Pull for the shore, sailor. We’d best manhandle her along the face of the cliff. I’ve had enough of that paddling.”
When they touched firm ground again they were surrounded by their friends, most of whom seemed to doubt whether the search of the cave had been properly carried out.
“I tell you,” declaimed the exasperated Michael, “I got right into the damned hole! It’s so small that I nearly broke my nose against the back wall as I heaved myself inside. It would have been a tight fit for me and a squirrel together. He’s not there, whether you like it or not. . . . I can’t help your troubles, Tommy; you can go and look for yourself, if you like the job of lying on your tummy on a raft that’s awash. I shan’t interfere with your simple pleasures.”
“But . . .”
“We’ve lost him. Is that plain enough? There’s nothing to be done but go home again with our tails between our legs. I’m going now.”
He accompanied his friends to the top of the cliff again; but when he reached the terrace a fresh thought struck him, and he loitered behind while the others, soaked and disconsolate, made their way down into the pine-wood. When the last of them had disappeared, Michael retraced his steps to the edge of the cliff.
“He reached here all right,” he assured himself. “And he didn’t break back through the cordon.”
He stooped down, picked up the rope, and refastened it round one of the pillars of the balustrade.
“Everyone knows there are secret passages about Ravensthorpe,” he mused. “Perhaps this beggar has got on to one of them. And quite possibly the end of the passage is in that cave down there. That would explain the rope. I’ll slide down and have another look round.”
He got into the cave-mouth without difficulty and used up the remainder of his matches in a close examination of the interior of the cavity; but even the closest scrutiny failed to reveal anything to his eyes.
“Nothing there but plain rock, so far as I can see,” he had to admit to himself as the last match burned out. “That’s a blank end in more senses than one.”
Without much difficulty he swarmed up the rope again, untied it from the balustrade, and coiled it over his arm.
“A nice little clue for Sir Clinton Driffield to puzzle over,” he assured himself. “Sherlock Holmes would have been on to it at once; found where it was sold in no time; discovered who bought it before five minutes had passed; and paralysed Watson with the whole story that same evening over a pipeful of shag. We shall see.”
He threw a last glance round the empty terrace and then moved off into the spinney. As he passed into the shadow of the trees he saw, a few yards to one side, the outline of the Fairy House dappled in the moonshine which filtered through the leaves overhead. Half-unconsciously, Michael halted and looked at the little building.
“They could never have overlooked that in the hunt, surely. Well, no harm in having a peep to make certain.”
He dropped his coil of rope, stepped across to the house, and, stooping down, flung open the door. Inside, he caught a flash of some white fabric.
“It’s the beggar after all! Here! Come out of that!”
He gripped the inmate roughly and hauled him by main force out of his retreat.
“Pierrot costume, right enough!” he said to himself as he extracted the man little by little from his refuge. Then, having got his victim into the open:
“Now we’ll turn you over and have a look at your face . . . Good God! Maurice!”
For as he turned the man on his back, it was the face of Maurice Chacewater that met his eyes. But it was not a normal Maurice whom he saw. The features were contorted by some excessive emotion the like of which Michael had never seen.
“Let me alone, damn you,” Maurice gasped, and turned over once more on his face, resting his brow on his arm as though to shut out the spectacle of Michael’s astonishment.
“Are you ill?” Michael inquired, solicitously.
“For God’s sake leave me alone. Don’t stand there gaping. Clear out, I tell you.”
Michael looked at him in amazement.
“I’m going to have a cheerful kind of brother-in-law before all’s done, it seems,” he thought to himself.
“Can I do anything for you, Maurice?
“Oh, go to hell!”
Michael turned away.
“It’s fairly clear he doesn’t like my company,” he reflected, as he stepped across and picked up his coil of rope from the ground. “But I’ve known politer ways of showing it, I must say.”