“What d’you make of it?” asked Doria.  “Your mind is swift and skilled in these deviltries.  Is it true that my master and my friend is a dead man—­the old sea wolf dead?”

“Yes,” said Brendon drearily.  “In my mind there is no doubt of it.  It is also true that a thing has happened which I should have prevented and a life been lost which might have been saved.  From the first I have taken too much on trust in this matter and believed all that I was told too readily.”

“That is no blame to you,” answered the other.  “Why should you have doubted what you heard?”

“Because it was my business to credit nothing and trust nobody.  I am not blaming anybody, or suggesting any attempts to deceive me; but I have accepted what sounded obvious and rational, as we all did, instead of examining things for myself.  You may not understand this, Doria; but other people will be only too quick to do so.”

“You did the best you could; so did everybody.  Who was to know that he came here to kill his brother?”

“A madman may do anything.  My fault has been to assume his return to sanity.”

“What more natural?  How could you assume otherwise?  Only an insane man would have killed Madonna’s husband, and only a very sane one would have escaped the sleuths afterward.  So you argued that he was mad and then sane again; yet now he has gone mad once more.”

Brendon desired to be at Dartmouth as swiftly as possible, so that a search might be instituted at dawn.  Doria considered whether he might make best speed by road or water, and decided that he could bring Mark more quickly to the seaport in the launch than along the highway.

“We must, however, return by the tunnel,” he said, “for there is no other route by which we can get back to the boat.”

Brendon agreed and they descended the zigzag path and then, from the plateau, reentered the tunnel and presently reached the steps again and the cavern beneath.  Extinguishing the lamp, which still burned steadily, they were soon afloat, and under a tremor of dawn the little vessel cut her way at her best speed, flinging a sheaf of foam from her bows and leaving a white wake on the still and leaden-coloured sea.

They saw a figure beneath the flagstaff at “Crow’s Nest” and both recognized Jenny Pendean.  She made no signal, but the sight of her evidently disturbed Giuseppe’s mind.  He stopped the boat and appealed to Brendon.

“My heart is in my mouth,” he said.  “A sudden fear has overtaken me.  This madman—­it may be that he has turned against his own and those who are his best friends.  There is a thing lunatics will do.  It follows—­while we are away—­do you not see?  There are only two women at ‘Crow’s Nest’ now, and he might come and make a clean sweep—­is it not so?”

“You think that?”

“With God and the devil all things are possible,” answered the other, his eyes lifted to the house on the cliffs.