“If Mrs. Pendean doesn’t mind the weather and there is no shadow of danger to the launch, then I advise that your niece goes down the coast and has a look into the caves as you propose,” he said.  “No doubt Doria can be trusted to see sharply after her.  Meantime we will quarter the wood.  If we could only get into touch with the man, it might be possible to secure him without making any noise.”

“There must be a noise if we catch him,” declared Doria.  “He is a famous criminal and who ever runs him to his earth and pulls him out will make a noise and receive great praise.”

He prepared for the coming voyage of discovery and, within half an hour, the motor boat danced out from beneath “Crow’s Nest”; then she held a course to the westward, rolling indeed, but not enough to trouble Jenny who sat in the stern and kept a pair of strong Zeiss glasses fixed upon the cliffs and shore.  They were soon reduced to a white speck under the misty weather; and after they had gone, Bendigo, in a sailor’s pea-jacket and cap, lighted a pipe, took a big black-thorn stick, and set off beside Mark.  The police car still stood on the road and, both entering it, they soon reached the gate beside which Robert Redmayne had appeared on the previous night.  There they left the motor and entered Black Woods together.

Bendigo still talked of his niece and continued to do so.  It was a subject on which the other proved very willing to listen.

“She’s at the parting of the ways now,” declared Jenny’s uncle.  “I can see her mind working.  I grant she loved her husband dearly enough and he made a pretty deep mark on her character, for she’s different from what she was as a girl.  But there’s very little doubt that Doria’s growing awful fond of her—­and when that sort loves a woman he generally finds she’s not unwilling to meet him halfway.  I believe now that my niece can’t help caring for the man, but all the time she’s secretly ashamed of herself—­yes, heartily ashamed—­for finding another in her mind only six months after the death of Pendean.”

Mark asked a question.

“When you say that her husband altered his wife’s character, in what way did he do so!”

“Well—­he taught her sense I reckon.  You’d never think now, would you, that she was a red Redmayne—­one of us—­short of temper, peppery, fiery?  But she was, as a youngster.  Her father had the Redmayne qualities more developed than any of us and he handed ’em down.  She was a wilful thing—­plucky and fond of mischief.  Her school fellows thought the world of her because she laughed at discipline; and from one school she got expelled for some frolics.  That was the girl I remembered when Jenny came back to me a widow.  And so I see that Michael Pendean, what ever else he was, evidently had the trick character to learn her a bit of sense and patience.”

“It may be natural development of years and experience, combined with the sudden, awful shock of her husband’s death.  These things would unite to tone her down and perhaps break her spirit, if only for a time.”