Here was a well-known English geologist taking a hard-working holiday after the manner of his kind. And yet—the vague and unaccountable doubt in my mind pricked on my curiosity, and made me impatient to exercise my penetration in resolving the doubt into certainty one way or other.
I came upon Miss Seemarsh sitting in a sheltered cleft of the rocks high above the path, reading a yellow-back novel. She gave me a free and easy nod. “You will find my father a little way on,” she shouted, “in the next opening, I think.”
I thanked her and went on. There was no difficulty in finding the Professor, who was kneeling on an overhanging platform of rock, hard at work. I clambered up beside him and congratulated him on his evident recovery from the effects of his accident.
“Ah! Still a little stiff and painful,” he jerked, [Pg 92]“but my holiday is drawing to a close, and I cannot afford to lose more time.”
“Then you must not let me interrupt you,” was my natural response.
“Oh, you are not in the way, my dear sir. In fact you can, if you will, be of help to me.”
I replied that I should be delighted if he would only show me how.
He took up a fragment of rock. “You see these streaks, those veins? They indicate tertiary fossils. If you will hammer off some pieces and just put aside all those that have a similar marking I shall be glad.”
“Here,” he continued, as I expressed my readiness, “let me put you on to a likely place. There is not much use in our both working together; besides, it is dangerous, as chips fly off.”
Accordingly he took me across to another group of rocks, where, after we had ascended a steep path, he set me to work on an overhanging shelf of the cliff. The wielding of a geologist’s hammer, when one is not especially keen on the science, is apt after awhile to become a source of fatigue and boredom. I soon got pretty tired of my work, particularly as I came across nothing that looked at all interesting. However, I stuck to it mechanically. At the same time, it was not what I bargained for; I was learning nothing of geology, since the man who might have instructed me was some hundred and fifty yards away; consequently, there was not a great distinction between my occupation and that of a breaker of stones on the roadside—a proverbially unexciting employment.
Anyhow, my work was not so absorbing but that my mind had room for other thoughts. Presently, in the midst of my hammering, it occurred to me—what if this setting me at stone-cracking should be but a trick to get me out of the way, and so leave the [Pg 93]two men at Sch?nvalhof defenceless? At the bare thought, I threw down my hammer, and had already run a considerable way down the sloping shelf, when the idea succeeded that I ran the risk of making a fool of myself. I stopped and listened. The sharp tap of the Professor’s hammer from beyond the next bluff reassured me. About to return to my task, I just stayed to listen to the hammer’s fall once more. What I heard though, was a great dull thud, followed by a crackling noise from the rock high above where I was standing. Then a terrific crash, as a great boulder came bounding down the rocky ledge towards me.
My situation was of course absolutely frightful. Escape was out of the question, with a wall of rock on one hand, sheer precipice on the other, and death, in the shape of tons of rock, crashing down the path to sweep me into eternity. Happily, the whole occurrence was so momentary that I had hardly time to realize my awful danger before it was past.
The great rushing mass was just upon me, when something, perhaps a projection from the rock or an unevenness in the path, gave it a slight outward bias. The result was, that before it came to me its course had begun to trend away from the wall; as it reached me, it was half over the edge on the other side, leaving a gap in which I stood unharmed; next instant it had overbalanced and gone down into the chasm, the noise of its fall reverberating in and out of the cliffs like thunder.
I can remember standing there leaning against the rock half-dazed with the shock of my danger, for the moment hardly realizing it and my miraculous escape. When I had pulled myself together and could look round, a great gap in the piled-up rock above where I had been working showed me whence the mass had been dislodged. My sudden suspicion and panic had [Pg 94]saved me, for had I remained up there I must have been crushed. Indeed, had I been surprised a couple of paces higher up the path it would have been all over with me.
I now made all haste to leave the dangerous spot; scrambled down to the ravine below, passed what came so near being the engine of my death, the huge boulder now resting peacefully enough on the bed of the chasm, and so round the next corner of the rock in search of the Professor. It was rather surprising to me that I had not already seen him or his daughter hurrying to ascertain the result of the fall, which they must have heard. As I came out of the comparatively open space in front of the ridge, my surprise was increased by the sight of the father and daughter talking casually together. The Professor was leaning in a careless attitude against a rock with what looked like a smile on his face; the girl stood by talking vehemently, it seemed, as I drew nearer, and he,—yes, I was sure of it—he laughed. So intent were they on whatever they were talking about, that neither noticed me till I was within fifty paces of them. It had further struck me as odd when the Professor began carelessly to play with the hammer, throwing it from one hand to the other in a way that argued either great fortitude in a man wounded as he professed to be, or an amazingly rapid recovery.
With a start he became aware of my approach. Even at that distance I could see that his face changed curiously twice: once to an involuntary, then to what I was sure was an assumed expression. Reading his looks the girl turned; her face also was a puzzle; startled at first, then relieved. The Professor dropped his hammer and came forward with alacrity.
“My dear Mr. Tyrrell,” he exclaimed effusively, “glad to see you safe. That was a nasty fall, and [Pg 95]we hardly dared wonder whether you had escaped. Heaven be thanked, it is all right, or I should never have forgiven myself for putting you to work there. But it seemed to me safe enough.”
I was scarcely in the mood to take his fluent, if jerky, apologies in a very charitable spirit, particularly as I seemed to detect an indication of disappointment lurking beneath them; and my suspicion was rather strengthened by a sort of confused shame in the face of the girl, who said nothing.
“You did not seem particularly anxious as to my fate,” I could not help remarking. “But for my providentially having moved from the place where you set me to work I must have been killed.”
The Professor now looked grave and concerned enough for anything.
“Tut, tut! Is it possible! I shall never cease to regret having put you in such danger. I am so very, very sorry. Believe me, I would have staked my reputation against the chance of such an occurrence.”
“I hope it will be a lesson to you, father,” the girl said in a low voice.
He gave a quick half-glance at her, and I caught under his glasses an expression which was not exactly remorseful. “It will be indeed,” he exclaimed, shaking his head up and down. “It is frightful to think of what might have happened, my dear friend; what a merciful escape!”
“Anyhow,” said I coldly, “it has taught me a lesson: not to run gratuitous risks, even in the name of science.”
“It is a mystery to me how that piece of cliff can have come down,” he said, rather obviously ignoring my tone. “Erosion would hardly account for it up there, and——”
Out of all patience I cut him short. “The scientific [Pg 96]side does not interest me, and I take leave to doubt whether, had you stood in my place, it would have seemed of paramount importance to you. I fear we are hardly likely to take the same view of the affair, so I will wish you a good evening.”
The affair was perplexing enough; and the more my vague suspicions of the Seemarshes advanced towards certainty, the greater puzzle did it become. But upon one thing I was resolved—to give them a wide berth in future. My narrow escape was not to be thought of without the irresistible suggestion of a sinister design. I, however, determined to keep my own counsel about it; Von Lindheim and Szalay being nervous enough as it was. But neither the Professor nor his daughter should be admitted into the house again if I could help it.
Such were my thoughts as I made my way from the rock valley to the village. The path, it will be remembered, descended upon and led past the inn. As I came round the corner of that house I happened, by the merest chance, to glance in at the window of the coffee-room. One man was in it, sitting half turned from the light, reading a newspaper. That casual glance sufficed for me to recognize him, then I sprang forward out of sight as he was about to look round.
It was Count Furello.