“Yes, yes. I don’t want a schedule of your daily exercises. Out out the athletic reminiscences and come to the point.”
“As I was rowing on the lake this morning, sir, I ’appened to see a boat ’itched up to a tree on the hisland. I think that possibly Miss Elsa and Mr. Barstowe might ’ave taken a row out there. Mr. Barstowe would wish to see the hisland, sir, bein’ romantic.”
“But you say you saw the boat there this morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, it doesn’t take all day to explore a small island. What’s kept them all this while?”
“It is possible, sir, that the rope might not have ’eld. Mr. Barstowe, if I might say so, sir, is one of those himpetuous literary pussons, and possibly he homitted to see that the knot was hadequately tied. Or”—his eye, grave and inscrutable, rested for a moment on Martin’s—“some party might ’ave come along and huntied it a-puppus.”
“Untied it on purpose?” said Mr. Keith. “What on earth for?”
Keggs shook his head deprecatingly, as one who, realising his limitations, declines to attempt to probe the hidden sources of human actions.
“I thought it right, sir, to let you know,” he said.
“Right? I should say so. If Elsa has been kept starving all day on that island by that long-haired—Here, come along, Martin.”
He dashed off excitedly into the night. Martin remained for a moment gazing fixedly at the butler.
“I ’ope, sir,” said Keggs, cordially, “that my hinformation will prove of genuine hassistance.”
“Do you know what I should like to do to you?” said Martin slowly.
“I think I ’ear Mr. Keith calling you, sir.”
“I should like to take you by the scruff of your neck and—”
“There, sir! Didn’t you ’ear ’im then? Quite distinct it was.”
Martin gave up the struggle with a sense of blank futility. What could you do with a man like this? It was like quarrelling with Westminster Abbey.
“I should ’urry, sir,” suggested Keggs, respectfully. “I think Mr. Keith must have met with some haccident.”
His surmise proved correct. When Martin came up he found his host seated on the ground in evident pain.
“Twisted my ankle in a hole,” he explained, briefly. “Give me an arm back to the house, there’s a good fellow, and then run on down to the lake and see if what Keggs said is true.”
Martin did as requested—so far, that is to say, as the first half of the commission was concerned. As regarded the second, he took it upon himself to make certain changes. Having seen Mr. Keith to his room, he put the fitting-out of the relief ship into the hands of a group of his fellow-guests whom he discovered in the porch. Elsa’s feeling towards her rescuer might be one of unmixed gratitude; but it might, on the other hand, be one of resentment. He did not wish her to connect him in her mind with the episode in any way whatsoever. Martin had once released a dog from a trap, and the dog had bitten