IN THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED THE VISIT TO ROGUES’ Cave, Cherry saw little of either Meg or Lloyd.
Meg had begun working as a volunteer in the office at the hospital. In addition, she was helping out at the library in the afternoons until someone could be found to replace the librarian’s young assistant who had left to get married. Meg spent most evenings until bedtime with her father. She was too busy to be bothered about rowboats with muffled oars or creels with initials on them.
Meg was very happy to see her father’s day-by-day improvement. Dr. Mac had taken Sir Ian off the Sippy diet, and had introduced a diet high in nutrition for him, to which Sir Ian had responded well. Although Sir Ian was still weak and any unusual effort tired him, both Dr. Mac and Cherry found his reactions to the change in diet very encouraging.
Lloyd was utterly absorbed in the mines. He practically “ate, drank, and slept” Balfour Mines. However, he always dropped in to see his uncle for a few minutes every day, then hurried back to the mine office.
Cherry, left in the great house with Sir Ian and the servants, was not kept as occupied as Meg and Lloyd. With his improving condition, her patient’s needs were less. And he made less demands upon her. In fact, he did not want to he helped.
“I often smile to myself,” Cherry wrote to the five Spencer Club girls with whom she always shared an apartment when she was in New York City, “because Sir Ian’s attitude is just like that of a small boy who is determined to be on his own. The other day he told me quite cockily that he could go downstairs by himself when I tried to guide him as he fumbled with his foot for the next step. Also, for two hours in the morning, he has been shutting himself in the library to work. The doctor has warned him that he must take it easy, not overdo. So I tap on the door and call ‘Time’s up’ when two hours have passed. Sir Ian comes out grumbling ‘One of these days, nurse lass, ye can tap a hole in the door like a woodpecker and I’ll pay ye no mind a-tall.’ ”
Since her duties were not now so consuming of time and effort, and she was quite often alone, Cherry found her attention kept turning to the boat with the muffled oarlocks and Old Jock Cameron’s tote bag—if, indeed, it were his—in the hidey-hole.
From her windows, Cherry could look down over the cliffs. Although she often watched for a rowboat entering or leaving the bay at Rogues’ Cave, she never saw one. She tried to draw out the Barclay servants by asking if they had seen a rowboat in the bay. None of them had. Ramsay, the gardener, went down to the beach one day to get sand and pebbles for the garden walks. When he returned, Cherry asked if he had noticed a rowboat in the cave.
“The day Miss Meg and I visited the cave, we saw one,” Cherry said.
“Then someone must have taken it away,” Ramsay replied. “I dinna see any boat.”
Then one morning while Cherry was having her “elevenses”—the customary tea at eleven o’clock—an interesting thing took place. She was sitting in the sun on the terrace near the kitchen, drinking her tea, when she became aware of Tess and a man talking inside.
Cherry heard the man say, “Na, na, Tess, ye canna persuade me. I’ll na go upstairs to see Sir Ian.”
“Then why do ye come here every day to pester me with questions?” Tess asked tartly. “How does he feel today? ye ask. Is he better? ye ask. What did he do today? ye ask. Did Sir Ian ask for me and did ye tell him that Old Jock was only waiting for him to get weel? ye ask. What’s the trouble with you, Jock Cameron? Ye should go talk with your old friend, Sir Ian, and find out for yourself.”
“I’ve my reasons,” came Old Jock’s reply. “Dinna ask me what they are, for I’ll na tell ye. When I’m ready to see my friend, I’ll come and na afore. And mark ye, Tess, ye are not to tell him or anyone else, I come here.”
“Is he and all Balfour to think, then, ye have forsaken Sir Ian in his sickness, Jock Cameron?” demanded Tess.
“Ah, ’tis something that canna he helped,” Old Jock said, and his voice sounded sad.
The back door closed. Cherry stood up to catch a glimpse of him, but shrubbery hid the kitchen entrance and she did not see him as he left.
When, a few minutes later, Tess came out to clear away the tea things, Cherry said, “I’m afraid I heard you talking with Mr. Cameron just now.”
Tess looked startled at first, then she said, “But I know ye waudna tell Sir Ian about Old Jock. Even though I get angry with Old Jock and his stubbornness, I trust him to do what he thinks is best for his friend. Ye must not think hard of him, Miss Cherry, for all he is acting so strangely.”
Cherry scarcely knew what to think of the man. She did wish that she could get a chance to talk with him herself.
Cherry had made a habit of taking a walk in the afternoon after tea. Usually she went to the top of the hill of the abandoned mine, for there was a glorious view of the sea and the island from there.
One sunshiny afternoon, about three weeks after her arrival on Balfour, Cherry started out on her usual afternoon walk.
She was at the foot of the hill when she saw the top of a man’s head appear just above the crest. He was walking up the other side and appeared bit by bit—head, shoulders, arms, body—as though he were a seed shown sprouting by delayed photography. As soon as he reached the summit of the hill, he looked about on all sides. Cherry, standing behind a scrubby black oak, escaped his attention.
Evidently satisfied that he was not observed, the man took something from his coat pocket and a second later Cherry saw a bright flash. He repeated the flash several times, turning in his hand what she decided was a mirror, to reflect the sun.
All the while he flashed his mirror, the man was gazing intently at something beyond the cliffs, not too far from shore.
For ten or more minutes, she watched him signaling with his mirror the dots and dashes of the Morse Code. It seemed to her a curious thing for the man to be doing. She wished she could have read the message he was sending with his short and long flashes. Then, even as she was watching, the man vanished. She saw him bending over among the bushes one moment, and the next, he was gone.
Cherry started running up the hill, fully expecting to see the man reappear at any instant. She reached the summit, however, without any sign of him. A quick glance down the opposite side revealed that he had not gone in that direction. The hillsides were empty of movement, except for the scurry of a rabbit or other small animal among the rocks and bushes. Cherry leaned against the big rock, which was at the very peak of the hill in the stiff grass and bushes, to catch her breath.
It came to her after a while where she had seen the man before. He was the short, muscular man, in the sharply tailored dark clothes, who had jostled her the day she and the Barclays had come over on the Sandy Fergus. She had had a good look at him on the boat. With the sun shining on him up there on the hill, she had seen him clearly.
Wondering to whom the man had been signaling, she scrambled up on the rock for a better view of the sea. She felt the rock tilt as if it were loose in its socket of earth. It was an odd sort of rock—gray and peculiarly rough and pitted, rather like foam.
Getting her balance, Cherry stood up on the rock and peered eagerly beyond the cliffs. She observed a fishing schooner a little way out from shore and a large rowboat coming toward the island. It was headed, so she thought, in the direction of the Barclays’ private beach.
The boat was coming on and she saw that there were half a dozen or more men in it, four of whom were straining at the oars evidently in an effort to increase its speed. As they drew closer, Cherry perceived that they were maneuvering the boat to head it into the pass between the rocks at the entrance to the little bay at Rogues’ Cave.
“The tide!” Cherry cried aloud. “When the tide is in …” It dawned on her then what Meg had meant about sailing the ketch when she and Lloyd were kids. They had had to wait for the tide, in order to get in and out of the bay.
Now Cherry knew why the man had been signaling. He was letting the men in the fishing schooner know when it was safe to come in with the rowboat. That was it, Cherry decided.
The men guided the boat through the pass between the rocks and were lost to view under the brow of the cliff above Rogues’ Cave.
She continued to watch, and presently the rowboat reappeared. It was loaded with some sort of cargo in sacks, which must have been heavy, for the boat was low in the water and the men were rowing with great effort. Upon reaching the fishing schooner, the sacks of whatever it was they contained, were put aboard, the men followed, then the rowboat was hauled up and stowed on deck. The fishing schooner sailed away to the south toward St. John’s.
Cherry started back down the hill, her mind busy with what she had just seen.
Within a short distance of the house, someone sang out gaily, “Hi, beautiful! How about a lift?”
And there was Lloyd, driving along the road in one of the company’s “Bugs,” as he called the little two-seater cars that were used by the various department heads of the mines to get about on the island.
Cherry walked over to the car. “Hello, Lloyd. I’d be glad of a lift. I’ve been up and down that big hill,” she said, getting in.
“What were you doing, training for the next expedition to the top of Mount Everest?” he teased, reaching over and tugging a curl. “You look to be in fine condition for it, Miss Ames. Your cheeks are rosy red and your hair is fair glorious.”
“Now, none of your flattery, Mr. Barclay,” Cherry said. “I want you to be serious. I’ve something important to tell you.”
“I’m all ears,” he replied, grinning at her. Then, frowning exaggeratedly, he said, “Speak, fair lady.”
“Oh, do be serious,” Cherry said, smiling in spite of herself. “A very strange thing happened on the hill this afternoon. I met …”
“Ah, poor lass,” interrupted Lloyd, shaking his head sadly. “Ye must have run into Rorie Gill. He’s often on the hill.”
“I wish you had told me,” said Cherry tartly.
As though he had not heard her, Lloyd went on dolefully, with more head shaking, “Rorie Gill. I waudna have thought it. Usually you see him in the fall when the Hunter’s Moon is rising over the Balfour hills and crags.” His voice began to roll dramatically, as Lloyd continued, “Rorie rides by moonlight on his dark horse and mounts to the crest of the hill. There he sits, peering out to sea until he sights a rich-laden ship approaching Balfour Harbor. Then Rorie rides down again, and, with the hollow laughing cry of the loon, summons his merrymen around him.”
Cherry laughed. “Lloyd Barclay, you are a much worse tease than my brother Charlie,” she accused him. “Please be serious for a moment.”
“Na, na, Cherry lass, I’m no in the mood now,” he told her. “It’s not Uncle Ian or ye waudna be on the hill. So …” He shrugged.
“Well, what makes you so playful this afternoon?” demanded Cherry. “And why are you coming home from the mines so early and as lightheaded and merry as a chipmunk?”
“I’ll not tell you until you’ve had your say,” Lloyd replied with a self-righteous air. “You’re bursting to talk, so out with it.”
They had reached the house and Lloyd drove up in front and stopped. “Let’s just sit here in the Bug,” he said.
Cherry poured out everything in a rush, keeping back only the part about Jock Cameron. When she finished, Lloyd laughed heartily at her and said, “Cherry, this island is a great place to stimulate the imagination. You go ahead and be as fanciful as you like. But the facts are that there are good fishing grounds just beyond the rocks at Rogues’ Cave. In the old days, the Barclays reserved them for themselves. The fishermen have always respected the rights, I suppose you’d call them. And off-islanders have left Balfour waters to the Balfourians for the most part. But times have changed.
“That fishing schooner you saw,” Lloyd went on to explain, “may belong to some off-islander. Those sacks could have been filled with sand to be used for ballast in the schooner. Might even have been rocks. They’re both used for ballast. Of course I don’t want fishermen using our bay and beach and making a nuisance of themselves.” He paused, thought a moment, then asked, “Would you describe the man again that you saw on the hill?”
Cherry repeated the description she had given him of the short, muscular man. “I saw him once before,” she told Lloyd. “He was on the Sandy Fergus the day we came to Balfour.”
“You know, Cherry, that must be Joseph Tweed, ‘Little Joe’ as he is called,” Lloyd said, his expression becoming stern. “He was hanging around outside the Mine Office last week. Someone pointed him out to me and said that Little Joe had been seen a number of times, talking to miners from Number 2 mine. I think you probably saw Little Joe again today. I can’t think why he’s hanging around the Island. Five or six years ago, Little Joe worked as a foreman in Number 2 mine. Then it was discovered that he was doing business as a loan shark on the side. If a miner had to borrow twenty-five or thirty dollars in a hurry, he would go to Little Joe and get it at once without any bankers’ formalities. Of course Little Joe charged about fifty cents interest on every dollar borrowed, and he wanted his money and interest back in a week or two. When Uncle Ian found this out, he fired Little Joe. He could have had the man arrested, but Uncle Ian let him off with a warning. Little Joe went to St. John’s and from all reports has done extremely well—owns property, a boat or two, has an interest in several businesses. He’s what is known in the States as a very smart operator and his reputation is none too good.”
“What do you suppose he is doing on the island?” asked Cherry.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Lloyd replied. “I’m glad you told me all this, Cherry. Now I’ll be on the lookout. See if Little Joe is up to something.”
“I think I’d better go in,” Cherry said. “It’s getting late.”
Lloyd opened the car door and she got out.
“Oh, by the way,” he said, “the entrance to the old mine shaft is on the top of the hill. Last time I was up there years ago, the opening was covered with boards and all grown over with vines and bushes. I don’t suppose you noticed it.”
“No, I didn’t,” answered Cherry. “There’s a big rock sitting right on top of the hill.”
“And I expect it was just a-sittin’ still, like the one in the verse that begins ‘I wish I was a little rock,’ ” Lloyd said with a big grin.
“And ends ‘Doin’ nothin’ all day long, but just a-sittin’ still,’ ” Cherry quoted at random, returning his grin. She started to go, then stopped. “By the way, you were going to tell me what put you in such a happy, carefree mood today, Mr. Barclay.”
“Tell you and Meg both at dinner,” he said.
At dinner that evening Lloyd reported to Cherry and Meg that the work in the new mine was going by leaps and bounds under McGuire’s supervision. The ore was very high assay, a much greater yield of iron than had been anticipated. Things were not going badly, either, at old Number 2, under Jock Cameron.
“I believe Balfour Mines may even make a profit this year if we can only keep it up,” Lloyd declared.
“I hope so. Oh, I hope so,” said Meg earnestly.
“Under the eagle eye of Mining Engineer Lloyd Barclay, I say they will,” Cherry declared grandly.