Brendon admired the varied charms of the Dartmouth coast, the bluffs and green headlands, the rich, red sandstone cliffs, and pearly precipices of limestone that rose above the tranquil waters.  The boat turned west presently, passed a panorama of cliffs and little bays with sandy beaches, and anon skirted higher and sterner precipices, which leaped six hundred feet aloft.

Perched among them like a bird’s nest stood a small house with windows that blinked out over the Channel.  It rose to a tower room in the midst, and before the front there stretched a plateau whereon stood a flagstaff and spar, from the point of which fluttered a red ensign.  Behind the house opened a narrow coomb and descended a road to the dwelling.  Cliffs beetled round about it and the summer waves broke idly below and strung the land with a necklace of pearl.  Far beneath the habitation, just above high-tide level, a strip of shingle spread, and above it a sea cave had been turned into a boathouse.  Hither came Brendon and his companion.

The motor launch slowed down and presently grounded her bow on the pebbles.  Then Doria stopped the engine, flung a gangway stage ashore, and stood by to hand Jenny Pendean and the detective to the beach.  The place appeared to have no exit; but, behind a ledge of rock, stairs carved in the stone wound upward, guarded by an iron handrail.  Jenny led the way and Mark followed her until two hundred steps were climbed and they stood on the terrace above.  It was fifty yards long and covered with sea gravel.  Two little brass cannon thrust their muzzles over the parapet to seaward and the central space of grass about the flagpole was neatly surrounded with a decoration of scallop shells.

“Could anybody but an old sailor have created this place?” asked Brendon.

A middle-aged man with a telescope under his arm came along the terrace to greet them.  Bendigo Redmayne was square and solid with the cut of the sea about him.  His uncovered head blazed with flaming, close-clipped hair and he wore also a short, red beard and whiskers growing grizzled.  But his long upper lip was shaved.  He had a weather-beaten face—­ruddy and deepening to purple about the cheek bones—­with eyebrows, rough as bent grass, over deep-set, sulky eyes of reddish brown.  His mouth was underhung, giving him a pugnacious and bad-tempered appearance.  Nor did his looks appear to libel the old sailor.  To Brendon, at any rate, he showed at first no very great consideration.

“You’ve come I see,” he said, shaking hands.  “No news?”

“None, Mr. Redmayne.”

“Well, well!  To think Scotland Yard can’t find a poor soul that’s gone off his rocker!”

“You might have helped us to do so,” said Mark shortly, “if it’s true that you’ve had a letter from your brother.”

“I’m doing it, ain’t I?  It’s here for you.”

“You’ve lost two days.”

Bendigo Redmayne grunted.