Unknown by Unknown

your master come?”
    “No, missus.”
    “Oh. Pass my wrist-watch, will you?”
    It was caked with blood and she bade him clean the face. A quarter to six. Julian had been gone nearly eight hours. “Have you heard nothing from your master?”
    “Little master come two-three hours ago. Him go ’way again.”
    Drew or Roger, she supposed.
    “I’d like some coffee,” she said.
    Waiting, Phil cautiously raised her left wrist, but the knife-twist up near her shoulder brought her hand back to its former position at her side. Her neck was stiff, her throat parched and hurting. She had never known such a concentration of pain.
    The coffee was long in coming, and when at last the boy placed the tray on a small table and pushed it near to the wicker couch Phil could not budge to pour it out.
    “All right, Sam,” came from the doorway. “Bring another cup and leave it for me.”
    She had heard neither the car nor his footsteps. When Julian came near and pulled up a chair she saw grime on his face and clothes, and sweat in the armpits of his drill jacket.
    “Did you find him?” she whispered.
    He nodded. “Black or white coffee?”
    “A dash of milk, please.” Her eyes pleaded. “You must be very tired, Julian, but ... I have to ask.”
    “Sugar?” He dropped in a spoonful and stirred. Intent upon filling the second cup, he said abruptly, “Yes, we found him hiding below the cliff, about half an hour ago.”
    “You’d searched all night?”
    “Climbed and watched. He’d made friends with the skipper of the freighter, and though I’d forbidden the man to sail I didn’t trust him. I guessed Clin had decided to swim out before it was light. We shook some life into Matt Bryson and the four of us spread out from the harbour to the lagoon.”
    He dragged the handkerchief from his top pocket and dried inside the open collar of his shirt.
    “Which one of you . . . captured him?”
    “He wasn’t captured. I was crouching in the ferns above the beach when I caught sight of him flat on his front and drawing himself along one of the paths to the lagoon. He heard me and got up to run, and I let him have it in the leg.” In a voice like steel he added, “I meant to take him alive.”
    “But, Julian, what good . ..”
    “I crippled him, but the woman—your servant—sprang up from nowhere and stuck a knife in his back.”
    “Manoela,” she breathed, her eyes wide and dark. “How . . . frightful!”
    “He was lucky,” he said in clipped tones. “Here, drink your coffee.”
    He questioned her about the sensations in the injured arm, and spread a brown ointment over the bruise.
    Presently she had the courage to say, “What did you do to Manoela?”
    “Nothing. We let her escape.”
    “I’m so glad. I hope she’s gone back to her room in my garden to wait for me.”
    There was a silence. Then Julian said: “You won’t be going back to the house on the cliff. It’s burnt out.”
    She pushed up on her right hand, staring. “Burnt . . . out?”
    “The heat was too fierce to trace a cause. At first it looked as if Dakers might have thought he’d killed you and returned to destroy the evidence, but it must have blazed up as soon as you left. It was an inferno when I got down there.”
    “I remember,” she said dully. “The lamp fell.”
    “That was my conclusion. No use fretting about it.”
    “My piano,” she reminded him bleakly, “and the books and tapestries. My clothes ...”
    “What about them?” he demanded roughly. “You might have fainted and perished with them. Can’t you be grateful you didn’t?” He sat down again and inclined her way. “Later on, Matt’s coming up for a talk. Meanwhile I’ll have one of the sheds cleared and a wooden floor and ceiling put in. It’ll be primitive, but we’ll do our masculine best to contrive a decent, all-purpose room for you by this evening.”
    “Thanks.”
    She lay back and managed to turn her head away, to face the, wall. He went through for a