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“I can see that it does,” Anthony said mildly. “But aren’t you making rather much of it? After all, Fen’s always been shy about showing her work—”

“Of course she has!” Martin interrupted angrily. “Because no one has ever given her a hint of its quality. And I don’t think that’s been due to ignorance. In my opinion, her work’s been deliberately played down as
'a nice litle hobby'
so that Fenella never has appreciated her own potentialities.”

“I’m not going to pretend I don’t know what you mean because, of course, I do,” Anthony said slowly. “But I quarrel with your use of the word ‘deliberately.’ I think the state of affairs has been the outcome of something so instinctive as to be both involuntary and unrealised. In other words, as the result of real devotion—”

“I’d call it something other than devotion,” Martin retorted. “Why, man alive,
real
parents very rarely try to possess their children as Fenella has been possessed. And don’t try to deny that the mildest attempt on her part to live a life of her own has been frustrated by appeals to her emotion and reference to her indebtedness ! I’ve got both ears and eyes, and in any case, it sticks out a mile! Have I made myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” Anthony said stiffly.

“In fact, as a guest in your house, I’ve been damn rude,” Martin suggested ruefully. “Sorry, Trevose, but you will appreciate that Fenella comes first with me—”

“Naturally,” Anthony agreed, and then, curiously: “Tell me, Adair, just supposing it should turn out that Fenella is such a howling success that she fancies a career instead of matrimony, what will you do about it?”

“I’ll face that if and when it happens,” Martin said grimly. “But, in general terms, you can take it from me that Fenella is going to get what she wants—if it lies in my power to give it to her!”

It was very quiet in Fenella's study. She was sitting in the window seat reading the manuscript which Martin had given her with enthralled interest. He, at Fenella’s charming little Chippendale desk, was metaphorically tearing his hair.

What he had written so far was, he knew, good. But for the life of him, he couldn't so much as outline the concluding chapters in a way that satisfied him. For the basis of his story was the true one which he had outlined last night and he had stuck fairly near to actual fact for his plot.

But the story—the real story—wasn't ended, and it wouldn't be unless he could find that elusive miniature and give it to Captain Franks. He could, of course, write up a fictional ending for his book, but so far, in comparison to what he had already done, any vague ideas he had had were completely unconvincing to him, at any rate. Of course, to the ordinary reader who didn’t know the true circumstances, it might go down all right, but he knew that he'd never be content with what he felt would be a fake.

His attention wandered from the pad in front of him and finally he laid down his pen and looked across the room to Fenella.

What a picture she made with her serious, absorbed face and with the sun shining on her bright hair—and how utterly unconscious she was of the fact! He wished he had her skill so that he could have made a sketch of her.

Suddenly, as if she had realised he was watching her, Fenella looked up and the swift colour stained her cheeks. Martin got up and came over to her.

“Well?” he asked, touching the manuscript with his forefinger.

Fenella smoothed the page she was reading with a caressing hand.

“It’s
real!
” she told him earnestly. “Alive—the people come off the page—or am I being silly?”

“No, you’re saying the one thing a writer wants to hear,” he told her, and shook his head ruefully. “If only I could finish it off in a way about which you’d feel the same thing! But it’s died on me.”

“It would come alive if only you could really find the miniature,” Fenella said dreamily, and Martin gave a start.

“How did you know that—after having read so little of it?” he asked, and Fenella shook her head.

“I don’t know—it just came into my head—”

“Well, you’re as right as if you’ve read my thoughts! Perhaps you have—” He pondered for a moment. “Fenella, I've got an idea in my head that I’ve got to wait for this—that it’s no good forcing it.”

“You mean you think something will happen—something that will put you on the track of the miniature?” she asked, half fearfully.

Martin moved restlessly.

“Perhaps—I don’t think I quite know what I do mean except—hallo, look out there! ”

He leaned forward to gaze at the salvage ship which had been a feature of the scene for a good many weeks.

“They’ve got all the gear aboard, and they’re hauling in the for’ard anchor,” he said with evident satisfaction. “This is what I’ve been waiting for! Well, one of the things, anyway! ”

FENELLA turned to look from the salvage ship to Martin’s intent face, so close to hers.

“Do you mean she’s going for good—and you knew she would be?” she asked in astonishment.

“Just that—though I didn’t know exactly when she’d go,” he acknowledged, still gazing out to sea.

“But they haven’t found any treasure—or have they?” she asked with sudden suspicion.

Martin shook his head.

“Not so far as I know," he said. “But then they didn’t expect to.”

“But of course they must have done!” Fenella insisted. “It costs thousands of pounds for these salvage ventures. No one would think of risking all that money if there wasn’t a good chance of getting that and more back!”

“No, they wouldn’t,” Martin agreed. “But then this isn’t and never was a treasure hunt. It’s simply been that what with the old story that’s been passed down by word of mouth for generations and the fact of any outsiders taking an interest in
Nimrod,
it’s come to mean that you’ve only got to say the name of the ship for everyone immediately to think ‘treasure’ because the original story has become more and more highly coloured over the years. But if you stop to think,
Nimrod
was wrecked at the tail end of the eighteenth century. She was a trading vessel-cum-passenger ship. Not the sort of ship that would be carrying treasure as the Armada ships did—jewelled crucifixes, chests of gold and silver coins, that sort of thing.”

“Then if it wasn’t a treasure hunt, what was it?” Fenella asked blankly.

“Something far less romantic but much more useful,” Martin explained.
“Nimrod
is lying in such a way that, combined with nearby rocks and the flow of the tide, there’s an increasing danger to shipping entering the estuary through gradual silting up. It’s something that should have been dealt with years ago, but it wasn’t until comparatively recently that anyone with sufficient knowledge
and
drive really got down to it. Trevose, in fact.”

“Anthony?” Fenella said even more blankly. “Do you mean he knew what it was all about right from the beginning?”

“He certainly did,” Martin confirmed. “More than that, it was due to his persistence that something was finally done about it.”

“But what?” Fenella wanted to know. “I mean, they’ve been diving all this time, but what have they done to improve matters?”

Martin hesitated.

“Well, you see those marker buoys with the red flags on them dotted round in more or less of a circle? They’re a warning to keep away. And if you notice, there are several boats lying off to make sure that nobody plays the fool. You'd also find, if you tried to use the cliff path, that a policeman would stop you.”

“Yes, but why,
why
?” Fenella demanded impatiently. “What extra danger is there all of a sudden! ”

“Can’t you guess?” And when she shook her head, “They’re going to blow
Nimrod
up—today.”

“Oh
no
!” Fenella exclaimed, shocked and incredulous. Martin looked at her curiously.

“That’s odd,” he remarked. “I thought that you, of all people, would appreciate that it had to be done—that you can’t let men risk their lives unnecessarily—and that’s what would happen if the wreck was left alone.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Fenella said slowly. “At least, the practical, common sense part of me can. But—but it seems to me so unpleasantly arbitrary and—and underhanded. Don’t you feel like that, too?”

“You mean, officialdom run amok—doing things without letting people have a chance to object?” Martin suggested.

“Yes, that’s just it, officialdom—” Fenella said eagerly. “I mean, it’s all been kept so very hush-hush, hasn’t it? Well, why, if it was all square and above board? No, it sounds to me as if it’s been done this way deliberately in order to avoid anybody protesting—”

“Of course it has,” Martin said coolly. “There would have been objections, and, I don’t doubt, obstruction if people had got to know about it—”

“There you are, then—” Fenella began, but Martin interrupted her.

“Just a minute, Fenella, look at it this way—to whom does
Nimrod
belong? Who has the right to say she shan’t be blown up?”

“I don’t know,” Fenella admitted. “But it must belong to someone—”

“Whether it does or not, is it likely, do you think, that any single person living in Fairhaven can possibly come under that heading?” Martin asked reasonably. “You know as well as I do that they certainly haven’t. Yet they’re the ones who would have raised objections—and the authorities knew it.”

“Yes, indeed.” Anthony, coming into the room with Mrs. Trevose, gave the confirmation unhesitatingly. “I took good care that they should! We don’t want trouble here if we can help it, and there would certainly have been some had the news got about—more bloodshed, probably. As it is, once it’s happened it’ll be too late for anyone to do anything,”

It was irrefutably true, and Fenella knew it, and yet she could not accept what was going to happen without a feeling of resentment. Of course wrecking had been a ghastly thing, something for which there could be no possible excuse, and yet, as a child, the thought of a ship full of treasure lying so near at hand had been exciting with the romance of adventure. And even now, though Martin had pointed out, there was no chance of there being any treasure, that feeling of loss at the destruction of something which had been part of childhood persisted. “When—?” she asked forlornly.

“Any moment now,” Anthony said briskly. “They very decently warned me, since we’re so comparatively close at hand and I’ve seen to it that all our windows are open. There ought not to be any trouble with blast.”

“And what about other people?” Fenella asked resentfully. “What about their windows?”

“The headland will protect them,” Anthony said in a preoccupied way. He had brought a pair of binoculars with him and was focussing them out to sea at the salvage ship, now stationary some distance away. “Yes, any moment! They’re running up a signal—and there goes her siren! Wait for it! ”

There were three smothered
booms
. Three plumes of water shot up into the air, seemed to hang there for a moment and then cascaded back to a sea that boiled and foamed. No one spoke until, slowly, the turmoil sank away and nothing was left but a few baulks of timber floating aimlessly about.

Mrs. Trevose was the first to speak. With a sigh of satisfaction she remarked:

“Well, now at last there’s some hope of all that wretched business will be forgotten. At least, there would be if only—” she didn’t finish the sentence, but her look at Martin was significant.

“If only I were to leave Fairhaven, Mrs. Trevose? No, I’m afraid I can’t agree with you over that,” Martin said gravely. “In my opinion only one thing will have that effect—if the miniature I told you about, and which is the basis of all the trouble, is found and returned to its rightful owner. And what’s more, if everybody even remotely connected with the affair knows the whole story. Otherwise, there will always be doubt and suspicion, whether I’m here or not After all, that’s been the state of affairs for many, many years, hasn’t it? Long before I put in an appearance.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Trevose agreed, “it has. But never to the degree that it has been lately.”

“I appreciate that,” Martin replied. “But again, wouldn’t that have been the case whether I was here or not? Oh, I grant you, I’ve been a sort of focal point, but I don’t think it’s on account of my name alone. I think it’s been that
plus
my connection with what they believed was a salvage ship. And I think that with the coming of the ship, even though I hadn’t been here, there’d have been a lot of feeling. What, do you think, Trevose?”

“You’re probably right,” Anthony said thoughtfully. “But not half as much feeling as there will be now,” he added ruefully. “I can only hope that their wrath falls on the distant, impersonal '
Them’
who ordered the job to be done rather than you and me, Adair! ”

“Do you really think that there’s any danger, Anthony?” Mrs. Trevose asked sharply. Anthony shrugged his shoulders.

“Not really, I suppose. Though it may depend on whether it’s generally believed that the treasure they were so confident—and so possessive—about was still on
Nimrod
and is now, for all practical considerations, gone beyond recall, or perhaps they’ll think someone got hold of it during the diving operations and is sitting tight on it. If it’s the first, then I’m going to be the scapegoat because it’s bound to come out sooner or later that I was the original cause of the investigation. But if it’s the second—” he grimaced expressively at Martin—“then I’d advise you not to take any chances, Adair!”

Fenella gave a sudden queer, choking gasp and rushed out of the room.

None of the three she left behind her in the study spoke, but for a brief moment the eyes of the two men met and each asked a question of the other to which neither knew the answer.