Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/274

 There was a silence. The wonderful watchers did not contradict.

"Yes, I suppose that's it," said Sharpe, fretfully.

"We'll put a curtain up to-morrow," said Somers.

The lieutenant would have liked to search the house. He would have liked to destroy its privacy. He glanced down to the music room. But Harriet, so obviously a lady, even if a hateful one; and Somers with his pale look of derision; and Sharpe so impassive with his pipe; and the weedy watchers in the background, knowing just how it all was, and almost ready to take sides with the "gentleman" against the officer: they were too much for the lieutenant.

"Well, the light was there, Mr Sharpe. Distinctly visible from the sea," and he turned to his followers for confirmation.

"Oh, yes, a light plain enough," said the one who had fallen into a ditch, and wanted a bit of his own back.

"A candle!" said Sharpe, with his queer, musical note of derision and fretfulness. "A candle just passing—"

"You have an uncurtained window to the sea, and lights were showing. I shall have to report this to headquarters. Perhaps if you write and apologise to Major Caerlyon it may be passed over, if nothing of the like occurs again—"

So they departed, and the three went back to their room, fuming with rage and mockery. They mocked the appearance and voice of the lieutenant, the appearance of the weeds, and Harriet rejoiced over the one who had fallen into a ditch. This regardless of the fact that they knew now that some of the watchers were lying listening in the gorse bushes under the windows, and had been lying there all the evening.

"Shall you write and apologise?" said Somers.

"Apologise! no!" replied Sharpe, with peevish contempt.

Harriet and Somers went back home on the Monday. On the Tuesday appeared Sharpe, the police had been and left him a summons to appear at the market town, charged under the Defence of the Realm Act.

"I suppose you'll have to go," said Somers.

"Oh, I shall go," said he.

They waited for the day. In the afternoon Sharpe came with a white face and tears of rage and mortification in his