Mona hurried on. Her immediate destination was the net factory. There
she found the company of nine or ten men. She was taken into the midst
of them. "This is the young woman," shouted Kerruish Kinvig; "and when
some of you fellows," he added, "have been police for fifty years, and
are grown gray in the service, you may do worse than come here and go to
school to this girl of two-and-twenty."
There was some superior and depreciatory laughter, and then Mona was
required to repeat what she knew. When she had done so she did not wait
for official instructions. She quietly and resolutely announced her
intention of going on to the cliff-head above Contrary with a lantern in
hand. When the light on the pier was run down by the fishing-boat, she
would light her lantern and turn it toward the castle as a sign to the
men in hiding there. The determination and decision of this girl brooked
no question. The police agreed to her scheme. And had she not been the
root and origin of all their movements, and the sole cause that they
were there at all?
But Mona had yet another proposal, and to herself this last was the most
vital of all. The four men who were to watch Bill Kisseck's house must
have a guide, or by their lumbering movements they would awaken
suspicion, and the birds would be frightened and not snared. Christian
had not been found. "He's off to Ramsey, no doubt," suggested Kinvig.
"I'll be guide to you myself," said Mona. "I'll take you to the Head,
place you there, and then go off to my own station." And so it was
agreed. It is not usually a man's shrewdness that can match a woman's
wit at an emergency like this. And then the men in this case were
police--a palliating circumstance!
Half an hour passed, and Mona was on the cliff-head. She had so placed
the four men that they could not see her own position or know whether
she duly and promptly lit her lantern or not. The night was still very
dark. Not a star was shining; no moon appeared. Yet, standing where she
stood, with the black hill behind her, she could at least descry
something of the sea in front. The water, lighter than the land, showed
faintly below. Mona could trace the line of white breakers around the
Castle Isle. If a boat's sail came close to the coast, she could see
that also. The darkness of the night might aid her. There was light
enough for her movements, but too little for the movements of the four
strangers behind her.
Mona saw the boat leave the shore that carried Kinvig and his four
assistants across the strait to the castle. In a moment she lost it in
the black shadow. Then she heard the grating of its keel on the shingle,
and the clank of the little chain that moored it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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