Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/smugglerscave00birmuoft Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). The book has an extra Chapter XIV following Chapter XV (i.e., the chapter sequence is XIV, XV, XIV, XVI). The numbering has been left as printed. THE SMUGGLERS' CAVE * * * * * * NOVELS BY GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM THE SMUGGLERS' CAVE GOODLY PEARLS THE GUN RUNNERS THE GRAND DUCHESS KING TOMMY SEND FOR DR. O'GRADY GENERAL JOHN REGAN THE MAJOR'S NIECE HYACINTH BENEDICT KAVANAGH HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED LONDON * * * * * * THE SMUGGLERS' CAVE by GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM Hodder and Stoughton Limited London Made and Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons Ltd., London, Reading and Fakenham An Introduction _Meant to make easy the task of those who review novels without reading them and to awaken the interest of others who read novels without reviewing them._ This is the story of the Hailey Compton Village Pageant. Pageants, good and bad, great and small, were commonplace affairs a few years ago. Every summer half a dozen of them were widely advertised and probably a dozen more ran blameless courses unnoticed except by those who took part in them. They were started by enthusiasts, worked up by energetic committees, kept within the bounds of historic possibility by scholarly experts. They came and went, amused a few people, bored a great many and left not a trace of their brief existence behind them. The Hailey Compton Pageant was staged in a small unimportant village. The people who organised it, the vicar's wife and the local innkeeper, were unknown to fame. It had, at first, no backing in the press except a few paragraphs slipped into provincial papers by Miss Beth Appleby, a young journalist of promise but small attainment. It had, at first, no aristocratic patronage, except the half-hearted support of Sir Evelyn Dent. It began in a casual, almost accidental way. Yet the Hailey Compton Pageant excited England from end to end, set every club in London gossiping, inspired a spate of articles in the daily papers, smirched the reputation of an earl and went near wrecking, at the next General Election, the prospects of a prominent statesman. Such are the tricks which destiny, a sportive imp, plays with human affairs. An elderly gentleman, in search of local colour for a perfectly innocent book, visits a remote village. An energetic lady with a taste for theatricals seizes an opportunity for getting up a show. An innkeeper, civil to every one and anxious to be obliging to all possible patrons, sees a chance of making a little money.