surprise that Redmayne had
not been arrested. He explained that fishermen and coast guards were
dragging the sea, as far as it was possible to do so, beneath the
cliff on which the sack had been found; but the tide ran strongly
here and local men suspected the current might well have carried a
body out to sea. They judged that the corpse would be found floating
within a mile or two of the Head in a week's time, if no means had
been taken to anchor it at the bottom.

Brendon called at Robert Redmayne's lodgings after he had eaten some
supper at the Singer Hotel. There he had taken a room, that he
might see and hear something of the vanished man's future wife and
her family. At No. 7 Marine Terrace the landlady, a Mrs. Medway,
could say little. Captain Redmayne was a genial, kind-hearted, but
hot-headed gentleman, she told Mark. He was irregular in his hours
and they never expected him until they saw him. He often thus
returned from excursions after the household was gone to bed. She
did not know at what hour he had come back on the previous night, or
at what hour he had gone out again; but he had not changed his
clothes or apparently taken anything away with him.

Brendon examined the motor bicycle with meticulous care. There was a
rest behind the saddle made of light iron bars, and here he detected
stains of blood. A fragment of tough string tied to the rest was
also stained. It had been cut--no doubt when Redmayne cast his
burden loose on reaching the cliffs. Nothing offered any difficulty
in the chain of circumstantial evidence, nor did another morning
furnish further problems save the supreme and sustained mystery of
Robert Redmayne's continued disappearance.

Brendon visited Berry Head before breakfast on the following day and
examined the cliff. It fell in broad scales of limestone, whereon
grew thistles and the white rock-rose, sea pinks and furze. Rabbits
dwelt here and the bloodstained sack had been discovered by a dog.
It was thrust into a hole, but the terrier had easily reached it and
dragged it into light.

Immediately beneath the spot, the cliffs fell starkly into the
sea--a drop of three hundred feet. Beneath was deep water and only
an occasional cleft or cranny broke the face of the shining
precipice, where green things made shift to live and the gulls built
their rough nests with scurvy grass. No sign marked the cliff edge,
but beneath, on the green sea, were boats from which fishermen still
dredge