“It is astonishing that your story should have been so near the truth when you knew nothing of what had taken place.”

“I did know something.  The door was open, the house dark, and she in a fit on the floor, saying there’d been a crash upstairs.  Then his door was locked, and I couldn’t get an answer.  Wasn’t that enough?”

“Hardly enough to warrant your saying that you feared your master had been murdered—­unless you expected him to be murdered.”

“I didn’t say that,” replied Thalassa with unusual quickness.  “All I said was that I was afeered something had happened to him.  There was reason for thinking that.  I had to make up my story quick—­that part about just going for Dr. Ravenshaw.  That was because I’d still got my hat and topcoat on, just as I’d come in from the moors, and I wasn’t going to break my promise to Miss Sisily.”

“Did you see the blood under the door when you went up and tried to get in?”

“I’ve told you all there is to tell,” was the dogged response.

“What frightened your wife so much?  Do you think she saw the murderer?”

“That’s what I would like to know,” responded Thalassa, with a swift cunning glance.

He turned his face away and looked across the sea, the brown outline of his hooked profile more than ever like an effigy carved by savage hands.  Charles scanned him despairingly.  The feeling was strong within him that he was still keeping something back.

“Thalassa,” he said, “you should have told this story before.  You have done wrong in keeping it back.”

“‘Twould a’ been breaking of my word to Miss Sisily.”

“It was of more importance to clear her.  You could have done that if you had come forward and told the police, as you’ve just told me, that she left the house with you before nine o’clock on that night.”

“‘Twouldn’t a’ helped if I had.  I found out next day that the wagonette didn’t get to the cross-roads that night till nearly ten o’clock.  ’Twas after half-past nine when it left the inn.”

“What made you find out that?”

“Do you think I didn’t put my wits to work when the damned detective was trying to put me into it as well as her?  I thought it all out then—­about telling the truth.  But I saw ‘twould a’ been no good for her, but only made matters worse.  Who’d a’ believed me?  There be times when a man can say too much, so I kept my mouth shut.”

There was so much sense in this that Charles had nothing to say in reply.  In silence they tramped along till they reached the dip of the sea in which the Moon Rock lay.  Here they paused, as if with the mutual feeling that the time had come for the interview to end.  Behind them towered the cliffs, with Flint House hanging crazily on the summit far above where they stood.  The eye of Charles ranged along the shore to the spot where he had said good-bye to Sisily not so very long ago, then returned to rest doubtingly on Thalassa.  The old man stood with his hand resting on a giant rock, his dark eyes fixed on the rim of the waste of grey water where a weak declining sun hung irresolutely, as though fearing the inevitable plunge.