"I promise from my heart," she said. "Not now nor at any time shall Geoffrey know what I have learned to-day." Marion blessed the speaker tenderly. "I am satisfied," she said. "He will never know." CHAPTER XLII THE SEARCH Mrs. May sat out on the lawn before the rose-garlanded windows of her sitting room. A Japanese umbrella was over her dainty head, a scented cigarette between her lips. For some time she had been long and earnestly sweeping the sea with a pair of binoculars. She rose at length and made her way down the garden. There was a rugged path at the bottom, terminating in a thicket that overhung the cliffs. Here it would be possible for a dozen men to hide without the slightest chance of being discovered. Nobody ever went there by any chance. Shaded from the house, Mrs. May paused. A softened whistle came from her lips, and then there came from the ground the dusky form of the man who called himself Ben Heer. He salaamed profoundly. "Well!" the woman demanded impatiently. "Well?" "Well, indeed, my mistress," the sham Ben Heer replied calmly. "It fell out as you arranged. Behold a puff of wind carried away the masts, and behold the oars came into fragments. Then the boat began to fill and now lies bottom upward at the foot of the cliff." "But he might have been a powerful swimmer." "He was no swimmer at all. I saw everything." "It was not possible for him to be picked up?" "Not possible, my mistress. There was no boat, no sail to be seen. The boat foundered and there was an end of it. I waited for some time and I saw no more." Mrs. May nodded carelessly. She might have been receiving the intelligence of the drowning of a refractory puppy. She betrayed neither regret nor satisfaction. "Of course, they will guess," she said. "When they come to examine the boat and the oars they will see at once that there has been foul play. Once more they will know that the enemy has struck a blow." "My mistress is all powerful," Ben Heer murmured. "They will try to trace us once more, Ben Heer." The sham Asiatic shrugged his shoulders carelessly. "And they will fail," he said. "They know not the powers arrayed against them; the dogs know not my gracious mistress. Meanwhile thy slave can see through the bushes that somebody awaits your presence." Mrs. May glanced in the direction indicated by Ben Heer. On the lawn Rupert Ravenspur was standing. The woman smiled. There was the head of the hated house actually seeking out the foe. "Your eyes are sharper than mine," she said. "Well, you have need of them. Meanwhile you had better discreetly disappear for the time." Mrs. May advanced to greet her guest. He bowed with his old-fashioned grace. "This is an unexpected honor," the woman said.