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But suppose she hadn’t been as convincing as she had believed? Supposing Anthony had guessed the secret she had so jealously guarded?

So long as he had believed that Rosemary had gone out of his life for ever, he would probably feel that since what Fenella felt for him was unlikely to be anything more than calf-love—something which in time would die of its own volition, then the less said or done about it the better.

But now! Once he had lost the girl he loved. Now he was being given a second chance. Not very strange if he made up his mind that nothing, so far as he was able to control events, should imperil that chance. And what was more likely to do just that than having a possessive, lovelorn little idiot always hanging round him?

In her bitter humiliation, Fenella lashed furiously at her love. Obviously, Anthony had known all about it and had been embarrassed by it. And that was another thing which confirmed her new understanding. Knowing it, he had also known that it would be a shock to her to realise that not only had he never thought of her in that way, but that he planned to marry someone else.

So he had made all that quite clear without actually putting it into so many words, but in such a way that he knew would bring her pride to the rescue of her hurt. And how could he know that? How did it come about that he was so sure she’d keep a stiff upper lip and have the courage to face her disappointment? Why, because he himself had taught her to do just that!

“Everybody’s got their own troubles, Fen,” he’d explained. “And while one ought to be willing to help other people with theirs, if that’s possible, it seems a pity to me to multiply the grief of the world by passing round your share for others to suffer from. Share your happiness by all means, but keep the rest to yourself.”

Fenella sighed deeply, and realised for the first time that one of the boatmen had finished swabbing out his little craft and had now come up the granite steps on to the quay. He was, in fact, standing so closely in front of Fenella that it was clear he had something to say to her.

It was Tom Polwyn who stood there, a big, hulking figure whom Fenella had never liked very much—though that might have been partly because he was to some degree or other related to Miss Prosser.

“Good morning, Tom,” she said briskly, sliding to her feet. “Is there something you want?”

“Like to ask ’ee a question, Miss Fenella,” he replied in a husky voice.

“Yes?” Fenella said in a far from encouraging way.

“About that chap off’n th' divin’ boat,” Tom began ingratiatingly.

“Which chap?” Fenella asked impatiently.

“Th’ chap as ye walked along th’ cliff with,” Tom elaborated, an unpleasantly knowing expression on his face. “Friend o’ yours, miss?”

Fenella stiffened. Fairhaven, like most remote places, was a hotbed of gossip and one just had to put up with it, but that in so short a time the news that she had walked along the cliff path with Martin Adair had already reached Tom in the harbour was really too much!

“Whether he’s a friend of mine or not is no business of yours, Tom Polwyn,” she told him frigidly. “And now, if you’ll kindly let me pass—”

But Tom didn’t budge, and since to try to dodge past him would not only have been undignified but also probably futile since Tom was a very broad, solid man, Fenella simply stood her ground in silence.

Tom smiled ingratiatingly.

“Now, Miss Fenella, don’t ’ee take offence when none’s meant! T’was only in my mind that if the gen’leman were a friend of yours, I might save’m a bit o' trouble! ” And again that unpleasant smile.

Fenella shrugged her shoulders.

“If you’ve anything of any importance to say, please do so as quickly as possible,” she requested coldly.

“Well, seein’ I'm doin’t a favour, as ’ee might say, I’d 'a thought—” Tom grumbled, and then, hearing footsteps behind him, turned quickly.

Mr. Phillips the Quaymaster was walking towards them, and realising that if she wished, Fenella could complain about his behaviour, he went on hurriedly. “It’s just this, miss. That chap, ’e asks too many questions! Ay, that ’e does! And—” he paused impressively, even threateningly, “us don’t like that, Miss Fenella. So what I thought was—if ’e’s a friend o' yours, will ’ee tell 'im—” he broke off as the Quaymaster drew up level with them, backed away and sheepishly lifted a finger in salute.

Fenella gave a sigh of relief, smiled at Mr. Phillips, exchanged a few words with him, and hurried back up Fore Street.

This time she took the shorter route by the road, but even so, she hurried so much that she was breathless by the time she reached Lyon House.

Mrs. Trevose and Anthony were sitting side by side in the shade of a big tree. Both exclaimed at Fenella’s flushed face. Anthony got up and insisted on her having his chair while he went in to get her a cool drink. She thanked him, but added urgently:

“Please come back as quickly as you can, Anthony, because there’s something I want to ask you about—”

He nodded without comment as he went off, but Fenella heard Aunt Gina’s swift catch of her breath and thought intuitively:

“She knows about Rosemary, and she’s afraid that’s what I’m going to question Anthony about!”

She hesitated on the brink of explaining that she had nothing of the sort in mind, but after all, she might have been mistaken, and then it would take so long to explain that Anthony might return in the middle of it—

So she lay back in the deck chair, her eyes closed, until a pleasant, musical tinkle told her that Anthony had come back and was holding out a tall glass in which ice bobbed about and from which two straws projected invitingly.

“An Anthony Trevose Special,” he declared as she took it from him. “And you’re to drink at least half of it before you start talking!”

She darted a quick look at him. Was he, too, afraid that she was going to talk about Rosemary and was imposing this short period of silence in the hope that by the end of it she might have had second thoughts? She didn’t know, but looking at Anthony’s dark face as he sprawled on the turf at her and Aunt Gina’s feet, she thought she detected a tautness about the muscles of his mouth.

She half emptied the glass, set it down on the garden table and began without preamble:

“I went down to the village by the cliff path and when I got to our gate, there was a man there who had come up from Pay-off Gove. So we walked the rest of the way down together—”

With meticulous care she told Anthony what Martin had said to her, and what she had replied. And finally, the unpleasant episode with Tom Polwyn.

Her two auditors listened intently, but though Anthony scowled when she spoke of Tom, neither of them interrupted her. Finally, when she had finished, Aunt Gina declared indignantly:

“I never did like that Tom Polwyn! He’s nothing but a great big bully who enjoys scaring other people—”

“That’s perfectly true, Aunt Gina,” Anthony agreed. “But I think, in this instance, there’s more to it than that. For one thing, from what this chap himself told Fen, he’s found more than one person unfriendly, not just Tom. And for another, granted that our local grapevine must be one of the best in the world, the speed with which that particular bit of news got down to Tom was well above our normal standards. In other words, it was important. Did this new acquaintance happen to say what his name was, Fen?”

“Oh yes, Martin something. Arden? No. Adair. Why, do you know him?” as Anthony gave an exclamation of surprise.

“Not personally. But by what he's done—yes. And so do you, Fen! He’s the writer of those adventure novels that have a factual background based on his own experiences. There was one about a trip up the Amazon, and another about crossing the Sahara. Excellent stuff. Individual style, and he maintains the interest right through. So many people who write that sort of stuff get so factual that they become boring.”

“Well, admittedly, he told Fenella he was writing a book,” Aunt Gina said doubtfully. “But after the Amazon and the Sahara, I should have thought Fairhaven was something of a comedown, wouldn’t you? Difficult to see how he could make much of a quiet little place like this. Surely it must be some other man.”

“We’ll soon see,” Anthony declared, energetically getting to his feet. “There’s a photograph of him on the paper jacket of one of the books—I’ll get it.”

A few moments later he handed the book to Fenella, and waited silently for her verdict.

“Yes.” She gazed at the pictured face with interest. “Yes, that’s the one!” and she handed the book to Aunt Gina.

“Not good-looking,” that lady commented. “But pleasant—and intelligent. All right, so that’s settled. Now what?”

Anthony pondered.

“You say quite rightly, Aunt Gina, that Fairhaven is a quiet little place, but that doesn’t mean nothing exciting has ever happened here. After all, what about the
Nimrod
?” He paused and repeated slowly: “Yes, what about the
Nimrod
? Fen, how was it that Adair explained his presence here? Yes, I know you’ve already told me once, but I want to hear again as nearly in his own words as you can remember.”

“He said he needed the information about skin-diving for a book, and that though he wasn’t a professional, they were very decently allowing him to make a nuisance of himself,” Fenella repeated, parrot-wise.

“Which could well be the truth—yet not the whole truth,” Anthony remarked. “Now then, when you said there was no proof that the wreckers were responsible for the
Nimrod
going down, he said that there was. Right? Well,
how
did he say it? As if he was quite sure of himself? Or was it a sprat to catch a mackerel? Did he hope to get more out of you by saying it?”

“I don’t think it was that,” Fenella said positively. “I think, in his own mind, he was absolutely certain that he was right. In fact, quite apart from telling you about this because of Tom, I was going to tell you because it seemed to me from the way he spoke that he’d at least seen that proof—even had it in his possession. And I thought you’d be interested.”

“I am,” Anthony acknowledged. “Very much. Because what you’ve told me revives a notion I’ve had for years but have never taken very seriously because I couldn’t find any confirmation.”

“Well, confirmation or not, something must have put the idea—whatever it is—into your head.”

“It did. But whether you’ll think it makes sense or not—you see, there is so little one knows for fact about the fate of the
Nimrod.
The date she sailed from America, and the date when she sank off Fairhaven. No, one other thing I did manage to discover—the condition of the weather. There was a fairly heavy sea running, the after-results of a storm—this was in January, you know. And there was a slight mist.”

“In fact, perfect weather for wreckers,” Aunt Gina suggested.

“Exactly!” Anthony agreed. “On the other hand, nasty weather for sailing a ship in the days when there were no lighthouses, no means of communicating with the land and no radar.
Nimrod
isn’t the only ship to go down within sight of safety on this stretch of coast, just as a result of bad luck.”

“All the same, you don’t think it was that?” Fen, deeply interested, asked, and Anthony shook his head.

“No, I don’t. And I’ll tell you why. I’ve always been interested in this particular wreck because the locals are so cagey about talking of it. As if they really do know something—and then there’s one other thing. When the late Rector died, I helped his son go through his papers and so on and we found various diaries and documents which had belonged to previous incumbents. There was one diary which covered the date of the
Nimrod's
sinking. It referred to that and said that all hands had gone down with her. The following day there was an entry about a local girl who had vanished on the night of the disaster—a girl named Elizabeth Trefusis. The Rector of those days was very much upset about it because he’d been booked to marry the girl to a local man whom he described as : ‘something of a rough diamond, but a good fellow at heart, as I saw by his distress at the loss of his betrothed.' Something like that. Well, apparently, she never did turn up. So what happened to her?”

“Oh, goodness, that’s anybody’s guess!” Aunt Gina exclaimed. “She might have decided that her future husband was a bit too much of a rough diamond—what was his name, by the way?”

“Prosser,” Anthony smiled at Mrs. Trevose’s grimace. “Ebenezer Prosser. Yes, she might, indeed, particularly as, no doubt, most people would either be by their firesides on a night like that, or on the beach, waiting for results. Just the sort of weather when one could slip off unnoticed. On the other hand—” he paused, rubbing his hand thoughtfully over his chin, “don’t forget it also had its disadvantages, especially for a woman, however strong. Gould she have got very far? And if she hadn’t, wouldn’t she have been found, either alive or dead? And there’s no record of either.”

“Then what did happen?” Fenella asked, enthralled with the old story as Anthony spun it out.

“What indeed! One can only make a guess. And mine is to wonder if there was any connection between the two incidents. And that’s where fact ends and guesswork takes its place. For instance, was everybody drowned? Or did perhaps just one survivor manage to swim or get washed ashore? If he had, you know, and the wreckers were out, his life wouldn’t have been worth twopence! But suppose someone helped him—hid him until all the excitement had died down—”

“And then they went away
together
!” Fenella said excitedly. “Is that what you mean, Anthony?”

“Just that! Of course, as I said, there’s not an ounce of evidence—or is there? Has Adair got hold of something that tells the other side of the story? And if so, was it something that either the girl or my imaginary individual recorded at the time?”

“Why not ask him?” was Mrs. Trevose’s practical suggestion. But Anthony shook his head.

“I very much doubt if he’d tell me—and anyway, I don’t want to appear to be too interested either to him or to the locals because—though this is again guesswork —I think it may be that there was something of considerable value on board. I think, too, that our people knew— and know-—about that. That’s why Tom Polwyn tried to persuade Fen to warn Adair off. Admittedly, they’ve never been able to lay hands on it themselves, but that’s no reason why they should let anyone benefit.”