The departure of the last guest from the Manor House was almost as great a relief to Lord Colavon as to Sir Evelyn. It was he who drove the judge and his suit case to the railway station in Morriton St. James. Having handed over the case to the porter and waved farewell to the judge he felt that duty had no further claim upon him. He swept the car round, picked his way through the narrow streets of the town and set out upon the road which led to Hailey Compton. There he indulged in a joyous burst of speed. The Pallas Athene, restored by the new parts sent from London, responded and showed herself to be the sort of car he hoped and supposed when he bought her.

The twenty miles to the top of the cliff were covered in less than half an hour, and when Jimmy changed gear for the descent into the village he felt well satisfied. He had reason to be. The weather which had pleased Sir Evelyn, resting in his study, delighted Jimmy who had the sparkling sea in front of him. Beth was at the vicarage and he was on his way to see her. He had stored safely in the cave six dozen pairs of silk stockings. He looked forward to seeing the pleasure of the two girls when he made his present to them. There were also in the cave a number of cases of brandy, some hundreds of bottles of champagne and a quantity of other wine, the property of James Hinton. There were some large bales of silk which belonged to Mr. Linker. Jimmy was not concerned about these. He had helped to land them and helped to store them, without, as he believed, attracting any attention or giving rise to any questions or inquiries. The business had been carried through with the greatest ease and Jimmy's part of it was over. The removal and final disposal of the goods was the affair of the owners. All Jimmy had to do was to pick up his own parcel, tuck it under his arm and walk out of the cave with it.

The car drew up at the vicarage door and Jimmy was greeted by the two girls with shouts of welcome.

"We're just starting off to bathe," said Mary.

"You'll come too, of course," said Beth. "If you haven't got a bathing dress you must borrow Uncle Timothy's. I've never known him bathe, but he's sure to have one somewhere."

Mrs. Eames, laden with towels, appeared and greeted Jimmy.

"This is just splendid," she said. "We'll all go and bathe together. Such a day! The first really hot day this summer. The pool at the mouth of the cave will be glorious. And then you'll come back and lunch with us. Now don't interrupt me, Beth." Beth was trying to speak. "I know there's nothing to eat, literally nothing. Two great hungry girls, Lord Colavon. You can't imagine what a lot of food they get through. But we'll send Gladys out to borrow what she can. Her aunt may have some bacon. Anyway we can get some bread and cheese. I'm sure you won't mind, Lord Colavon. Beth is trying to say that you will, but you won't."

"I wasn't trying to say any such thing," said Beth. "I was trying to say that Jimmy hasn't got a bathing dress."

"Would Timothy's fit you? He has one, I know, for I bought it for him last summer. But he's never worn it, not once. Such a pity. But you know the sort of man your poor, dear uncle is, Beth. He won't enjoy himself. So tiresome of him. I'm just as fond of him as I was the day I married him, but I do wish I could tempt him to do something really wrong. It would be so good for him. Not that bathing is wrong. It isn't. Though I sometimes think that Timothy thinks it is."

After a long search in which both girls joined, the vicar's bathing dress was found, still wrapped in the paper in which it had left Linker's shop in Morriton St. James. The towel offered by Mrs. Eames was not so new. Indeed it was far from being clean. The vicar, apparently, had not thought it wrong to use it.

"How tiresome," said Mrs. Eames, a few minutes later as they crossed the beach. "There's somebody there at the mouth of the cave. A man. I can't think what he's doing there. It doesn't matter really of course. Still, it would have been nicer if we'd had the place to ourselves."

"He looks like a policeman," said Mary.

"He can't be a policeman," said Mrs. Eames. "There aren't any in Hailey Compton. I never saw one here in my life except on the day of the pageant. There were a few then."

"It is a policeman right enough," said Jimmy.

They were near enough to be sure of the uniform. Mrs. Eames was surprised and annoyed.

"Perhaps he'll go away," she said, "when he sees we're going to bathe. I'm not particularly modest and I don't mind any ordinary man watching me. But a policeman is different somehow. I'm sure you'd hate to have a policeman standing about while you undress, wouldn't you, Mary?"

Beth evidently disliked the presence of the policeman quite as much as her aunt did, though not perhaps through feelings of modesty. She caught Jimmy's arm and looked anxiously into his face.

"Let's wave towels and bathing dresses," said Mrs. Eames, "and if that doesn't make him understand that he's not wanted you'll have to ask him to go away, Lord Colavon."

The demonstration with towels and bathing dresses had no effect whatever on the policeman. He stood there, stolid and unmoved, an Englishman at the post of duty, and in all the world there is nothing so immovable as that.

Jimmy, pushed forward by Mrs. Eames, approached the man.

"I wonder," he said, "if you'd mind moving away a little, a few yards along the beach in either direction. The ladies want to bathe in this pool and it's rather awkward if you stand just there. No place to undress, you know."

"Very sorry, sir," said the policeman. "No one is allowed to enter the cave. Orders, sir."

"Orders!" said Jimmy sharply. "Whose orders?"

"Orders of the district superintendent at Morriton St. James, sir."

Jimmy turned away and whistled softly. Mrs. Eames addressed a vigorous protest to the policeman. She said a great deal about the rights of free British citizens to enter caves if they chose. She argued about the unreasonableness of interfering with an innocent pleasure like bathing. She spoke, as she always did, volubly and with energy. The policeman remained entirely indifferent, merely repeating the word "Orders" from time to time when Mrs. Eames paused for breath.

"Jimmy," said Beth, in an anxious whisper, "what's he doing here?"

"It looks to me," said Jimmy, "very much as if somebody had tumbled to the fact that all the cargo we landed the other night wasn't stage property. If so, the fat's in the fire and no mistake."

"But was there anything really smuggled?" said Beth.

There is honour and a sense of comradeship among thieves. Jimmy would not give away the secrets of Hinton and Linker.

"There was that little parcel of silk stockings," he said, "which I promised to get for you and Mary."

"How perfectly sweet of you," said Mary. "I never thought you really meant to."

"I'm beginning to wish I hadn't," said Jimmy. "That policeman——"

"Do you mean to say he'll take the stockings?" said Mary. "How mean!"

"I'm very much afraid he'll do more than that," said Jimmy.

"Jimmy, dearest," said Beth, "do you think he'll put you in prison?"

Mrs. Eames, finding that neither protests nor arguments affected the policeman, ended her harangue with a threat.

"Perhaps you're not aware," she said, "that my husband is the vicar of the parish, the Reverend Timothy Eames. I shall go straight to him now and tell him of your outrageous behaviour. He'll know how to deal with you."

She cannot have believed that; but she spoke with dignity and firmness, as if her husband was a masterful archdeacon and the policeman a naughty choirboy. Perhaps the policeman knew the Reverend Timothy Eames, perhaps he was a believer in the majesty of the law and held that the temporal power is greater than the might of the Church. He was quite unmoved by the threat, and when Mrs. Eames turned her back upon him and walked stiffly away he showed no sign of fear.

Mrs. Eames, very angry indeed, stalked back across the beach. Jimmy and the girls followed her, Mary puzzled, Beth anxious, Jimmy thinking deeply.

"You'd better go to the vicarage with your aunt," he said. "I must trot off and see James Hinton."

"But can't I help you?" said Beth. "I'm rather frightened. I do wish you hadn't done it, Jimmy."

Jimmy refrained from saying he was not the only person who had done it and that things would have been just as bad if there were no silk stockings in the cave for her and Mary.

A fresh surprise, exceedingly alarming and unpleasant, waited for him at the Anchor Inn. On the bench outside were two policemen. They were seated very much at their ease in the pleasant sunshine, and both of them were smoking. It was plain that they were not on duty at the moment. Jimmy's first thought was that Hinton had been already arrested, but the attitude of the policemen reassured him. It is not lolling with a pipe in his mouth that the British constable guards an important prisoner.

Jimmy passed into the inn and found Hinton in the room behind the bar packing a suit-case. He looked white and haggard and was badly frightened. But even with the fear of the vengeance of the law hanging over him his excellent manners did not fail.

"Good morning, my lord. Is there anything I can do for your lordship? I fear the house is rather upset, but—a glass of beer, perhaps? I am thinking of going away for a few days, just packing up, as you see, my lord. But if there's anything I can do to make your lordship comfortable before I go—— It has always been my wish, my lord, to make any gentleman who employs me as comfortable as possible—or his friends, my lord."

The man, apparently, scarcely knew what he was saying. He was frightened out of his senses and was possessed by a desire to get away as quickly as possible.

"You're not arrested, are you, Hinton?"

"Me, my lord! Certainly not. I've always borne a most excellent character. No one has ever had occasion to say anything against me. I'm—I'm going away for a few days, my lord. A little holiday."

"There's a policeman at the mouth of the cave, Hinton, and there are two more outside your door at this moment. What are they doing?"

"I don't know, my lord. I prefer not to inquire; but——" Here Hinton's nerves failed him completely, and he broke down. Even his precise English failed him, and he forgot to say "my lord" at the end of every sentence. "Mr. Linker, he 'phoned through this morning," he whimpered. "He said as how that cave was to be guarded night and day so that nobody could go in or out nor nothing be taken in or out till to-morrow and then the blasted Customs officers is to come and see what's there. They can't arrest me till then. There isn't nothing for them to go on, till they can lay their hands on the goods. That's why I'm off. And Mr. Linker, he's off too. And if you take my advice you'll do a bolt before they nab you. France I'm going to, or maybe Spain. Linker, he's thinking of Russia; says as how the Russian Government won't give him up. But I don't know. I never did trust them Bolshies myself."

It was plain that there was neither counsel of a sensible kind nor any help to be got from James Hinton. The man was the victim of an ague of terror, and could not be trusted to do the simplest thing. Jimmy left the inn, speaking a word of cheerful greeting to the policemen as he passed.

An hour later James Hinton placed his suit-case in the Ford car which had once towed the Pallas Athene into Morriton St. James. He cranked up his engine and went clattering up the village street. The policemen watched him go. Then one of them took possession of the telephone in the inn and rang up the constabulary office in Morriton St. James. No one had authority or power to stop Hinton, but the police felt that it might be convenient to know where he went, in case they wanted to arrest him later on. The progress of the car was reported until it was placed in a garage in Southampton. Hinton's further movements and his embarking on board the steamer for St. Malo were also reported. After that, he was left to the French police to see where he went and what he did.

Mr. Linker, making a break for freedom in another direction, reached Amsterdam and was there marked down by the police. Whether he would ever have got to Russia, or what would have happened to him there if he had, we do not know. It turned out to be unnecessary for him to go beyond Amsterdam. Hinton got no further than an hotel in ParamÉ.

Jimmy went back to the vicarage. He found Beth and Mary anxious and troubled. Mrs. Eames had gone up to the church, where she expected to find her husband. She intended, so Beth said, to induce that unfortunate man to go down to the cave and drive away the policeman, by force if necessary.

"Beth," said Jimmy, "we're in a middling tight place, all of us, especially me. I've told you that I smuggled over a few stockings for you and Mary."

"Surely there won't be a row over a couple of pairs of silk stockings," said Mary. "Nobody could be fool enough to make a fuss about that, not a real fuss."

"As a matter of fact there are six dozen pairs," said Jimmy. "But——"

"How gorgeous!" said Mary. "Three dozen each. Jimmy, we must get them somehow. Suppose I go and make myself perfectly sweet to that policeman. He might be beguiled into letting me——"

"Do shut up, Mary," said Beth anxiously. "This is serious. Go on, Jimmy. What were you going to say?"

"If it was only the stockings I've smuggled," said Jimmy, "there wouldn't be much said about it, but the damned lugger was half full of brandy and wine for Hinton and bales of silk for that sneaking ruffian Linker."

"Will they be arrested?" said Beth. "Don't say they'll be hanged. They don't hang people for smuggling nowadays, do they?"

"They won't be arrested or hanged if I can help it," said Jimmy. "Not that I'd care if they were. I'd be glad. Those two sneaking cowards have bolted, leaving the rest of us to take what's coming, and it'll be mighty unpleasant, unless——"

"Will they put you in prison, Jimmy?" said Mary.

"They may. I don't know, and I don't much care. It won't be for very long, anyhow. What I mind is the infernal mess Uncle Evie will be in, and your aunt, and the bishop, a thoroughly decent old boy that bishop, and all the rest of them. They'll never be able to hold up their heads again. What I mean to say is, it doesn't matter about a fellow like me. But how can Uncle Evie go on being a leading statesman and all that? How can the bishop go on preaching the way bishops do? How can your aunt go on being a vicar's wife, if once it comes out that they've all been deliberately defrauding the revenue on a large scale?"

"Do you mean to say that Aunt Agatha will have to give up being married to Uncle Timothy?" said Beth. "She never will, whatever they say or do to her."

"She'll have to," said Jimmy. "Either that or he'll have to resign the parish, unless we can pull them out of the mess they're in."

"Then let's do it," said Beth. "I'm on for anything to save Aunt Agatha and your old pet of an uncle whom I love. And the bishop. I've always liked bishops, and this one seemed particularly nice. You'll help too, Mary, won't you?"

"Of course I will. I may not be as keen on bishops as you are, Beth, but there are very few things I wouldn't do for the sake of three dozen pairs of silk stockings."

"The first question," said Jimmy, "is, can we persuade your uncle to chip in and stand by us?"

"He'd do anything for Aunt Agatha," said Beth. "He's just as fond of her as she is of him."

"I wonder would he do the sort of thing that some people might call wrong?"

"Of course he would," said Mary. "Anybody would. All really nice and exciting things are wrong, but everybody does them."

Beth was doubtful.

"Uncle Timothy," she said, "isn't like you, Mary, or like most other people. He has a conscience, rather a queer kind of conscience, quite different from Aunt Agatha's, though hers is pretty silly too. The way it takes her is, making her do things, for the parish and all that; whereas it works the other way round with Uncle Timothy, and won't let him do anything hardly. Queer things consciences are, aren't they?"

"Glad I haven't got one," said Mary.

"Well," said Jimmy, "we'll try him. But I tell you plainly that if he won't, we're in an ugly place. Whether he helps or not, we're in an ugly place; but it'll be much uglier if he won't stand in with us. I'm not going to ask him to do much; but I must be able to count on his not giving us away. I think I'd better go up to the church and tackle him."