He did not notice me.  He rushed down with a certain wild joy into the turbulent water, and, plunging in with a loud cry, buffeted the huge waves with those strong curving arms of his.  The sou’-wester was rising.  Each breaker as it reared caught him on its crest and tumbled him over like a cork, but like a cork he rose again.  He was swimming now, arm over arm, straight out seaward.  I saw the lifted hands between the crest and the trough.  For a moment I hesitated whether I ought to strip and follow him.  Was he doing as so many others of his house had done—­courting death from the water?

But some strange hand restrained me.  Who was I that I should stand between Hugo Le Geyt and the ways of Providence?

The Le Geyts loved ever the ordeal by water.

Presently, he turned again.  Before he turned, I had taken the opportunity to look hastily at his clothes.  Hilda Wade had surmised aright once more.  The outer suit was a cheap affair from a big ready-made tailor’s in St. Martin’s Lane—­turned out by the thousand; the underclothing, on the other hand, was new and unmarked, but fine in quality—­bought, no doubt, at Bideford.  An eerie sense of doom stole over me.  I felt the end was near.  I withdrew behind a big rock, and waited there unseen till Hugo had landed.  He began to dress again, without troubling to dry himself.  I drew a deep breath of relief.  Then this was not suicide!

By the time he had pulled on his vest and drawers, I came out suddenly from my ambush and faced him.  A fresh shock awaited me.  I could hardly believe my eyes.  It was not Le Geyt—­no, nor anything like him!

Nevertheless, the man rose with a little cry and advanced, half crouching, towards me.  “You are not hunting me down—­with the police?” he exclaimed, his neck held low and his forehead wrinkling.

The voice—­the voice was Le Geyt’s.  It was an unspeakable mystery.  “Hugo,” I cried, “dear Hugo—­hunting you down?—­Could you imagine it?”

He raised his head, strode forward, and grasped my hand.  “Forgive me, Cumberledge,” he cried.  “But a proscribed and hounded man!  If you knew what a relief it is to me to get out on the water!”

“You forget all there?”

“I forget it—­the red horror!”

“You meant just now to drown yourself?”

“No!  If I had meant it I would have done it. . . .  Hubert, for my children’s sake, I will not commit suicide!”

“Then listen!” I cried.  I told him in a few words of his sister’s scheme—­Sebastian’s defence—­the plausibility of the explanation—­ the whole long story.  He gazed at me moodily.  Yet it was not Hugo!

“No, no,” he said, shortly; and as he spoke it was he.  “I have done it; I have killed her; I will not owe my life to a falsehood.”

“Not for the children’s sake?”

He dashed his hand down impatiently.  “I have a better way for the children.  I will save them still. . . .  Hubert, you are not afraid to speak to a murderer?”